For some students, an exam isn’t a test of knowledge but of endurance. The paper in front of them may as well be a mountain, each question another incline demanding focus, calm, and control, all of which ADHD can quietly steal in moments of pressure.
The Holmewood School’s exam results have improved steadily over recent years. This hasn’t happened by chance. It comes from a deliberate decision to raise the profile of exams and prepare students not just academically, but emotionally and practically.
One of the biggest shifts has been embedding access arrangements early. Students are tested in Year 9 so that when they reach Year 10, arrangements for extra time, rest breaks, smaller rooms, a prompter or a scribe can be put in place. When the exam environment reflects the way a student learns, the exam becomes a fairer reflection of knowledge rather than a test of regulation.
Simon Hardwick, our Exams Officer, explains it simply: ‘The aim is always for access arrangements to feel natural. If it’s the student’s usual way of working, then it doesn’t feel like a special measure, it just feels fair.’
Fairness looks different for every student. For some, ADHD manifests as hyperfocus, causing a student to get so absorbed in one question that they lose all sense of time. ‘You’ll see students who spend forty minutes on the first question and then rush the rest,’ Simon says. ‘It’s not lack of ability, it’s the way attention behaves under pressure.’ For others, distractibility scatters their attention across every sound or movement in the room.
In lessons, our teachers differentiate constantly. We adjust pace, provide visuals, and use flexible grouping to meet learners where they are. But exams are traditionally based on a ‘one size fits all approach’, with identical conditions for all students. Our challenge as a specialist school is to bridge that gap. Access arrangements and explicit teaching of exam skills translate the differentiation that happens daily in class into the rigidity of an exam. We cannot change the mountain entirely, but we can make sure every student has the right equipment to climb it.
A continued focus on executive functioning has also been central to our exam success. Executive functioning refers to the brain’s management skills: planning, organisation, working memory, impulse control and time awareness. ADHD can impact these skills, so we teach them directly. Students learn to break big tasks into smaller steps, use planners and timers, and recognise when anxiety or low mood is affecting focus.
For some, regulation means taking a short break to move, stretch or breathe. For others, it means a quieter space or a trusted invigilator. As Simon says, these adjustments can be key: ‘The right environment removes barriers. The exam should measure what they know, not how well they can suppress their ADHD.’
When every student has some form of access arrangement, as they do at Holmewood, it becomes the norm. A shared language rather than a label. The conversation moves away from who gets what, and towards what each person needs to do their best.
The change we’ve seen isn’t just in results, but in atmosphere. Anxiety has softened into confidence. Students enter exams knowing they have the tools, permission and trust to manage themselves. ‘You can feel it in the rooms,’ Simon says. ‘They’re calm. Focused. It’s quiet, but not tense. Everyone knows what to do, and everyone feels looked after.’
At the heart of it all is creating the conditions where learners can show what they know, without being derailed by pressure. Success isn’t measured only in grades but in the belief that they can meet challenges on their own terms. When we raise the profile of exams, embed access early, strengthen executive functioning and teach regulation as a skill, we move closer to true fairness.
Education should never be about forcing everyone to sit the same test in the same way. It should be about creating a world where every student, regardless of how their brain works, has a fair chance to show what they know and can do.
Bridget Young is the Headteacher of The Holmewood School, London and has 20 years’ experience in education with 13 years in autism-specific education. She brings both personal and professional experience of neurodivergence, and has a special interest in coaching, habits, and wellness. This piece reflects her belief that when access arrangements are embedded early and adjustments are normalised, exams can shift from an endurance test to a fair opportunity for ADHD learners to show what they know.
