Med student with dyslexia says multiple choice questions discriminatory

From The Telegraph in the UK:

Naomi Gadian, 21, from Manchester, said multiple choice discriminated against people with dyslexia and should be scrapped.

If she wins her case, all medical schools may have to restructure their testing policies and it could force other professional bodies or employers to follow suit.

The second year medical student, who studies at The Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in Plymouth, wants to take the General Medical Council (GMC) to an employment tribunal.

The GMC insists it has no powers to set medical examinations which are controlled by individual colleges and universities.

But Miss Gadian said she was determined to pursue her case because the GMC is the body which sets the standards for undergraduate medical education.

She plans to take action against the GMC and her college under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

"In normal life you don't get given multiple choice questions to sit," she said. "Your patients aren't going to ask you 'Here's an option and four answers. Which one is right?'"

Although Miss Gadian got an A and two Bs in her A-level exams, her solicitor John MacKenzie said she was at a disadvantage at her college because they predominantly use multiple choice for assessment.

"Naomi is very bright, very dedicated and very hard-working," he said. "She also has a form of dyslexia which means she has difficulty with multiple choice questions.

"She's had to resit last year because of this but got through. She's now faced with the prospect of her final two or three years taking these tests, which she finds extremely difficult.

"This is not a question of a lack of intelligence or a lack of intellect."

Mr MacKenzie said Miss Gadian had not wanted to take legal action but had been left with little choice: "They have got to come up with a different way of testing her
knowledge."

He said legal action was in its early stages and no date or venue had yet been set for the hearing.

A spokesman from Peninsula College, a branch of the University of Exeter, said several students suffering from dyslexia - which affects 10 per cent of the population - had graduated from the college.

He would not comment directly on the case, but said: "We take our responsibility to students with dyslexia seriously and we can report that, within the two cohorts to have graduated from the Peninsula Medical School so far, nine have done so with dyslexia.

"Our ultimate responsibility is to produce doctors of the highest quality who are fit for practice, and any reasonable adjustments we have made for students with dyslexia reflect this objective."

The GMC said it had no power to tell medical schools how to test their students but had recently issued new guidance about how to make education more accessible for students with disabilities.

Sue Flohr, from the British Dyslexic Association (BDA), said they advised employers to avoid multiple choice questions.

She said: "These can be discriminatory for dyslexic candidates where there are difficulties in the areas of reading and comprehension, working memory and visual tracking - such as finding the right box."

Oxford University neuroscientist Professor John Stein, who has been studying dyslexia for 25 years, said sufferers struggle to concentrate on multiple choice because of poor eye co-ordination.

He said: “Dyslexics confuse the order of letters because their eye control is not ideal.”