This book is a superb all-in-one guide to success GCSE English Language and English Literature - GCSE English 2003

Worked Exam Answer
Section Nine — Media and Non-Fiction Questions

I know that you'll be champing at the bit to get on to the practice exam question, but it'll help you out a lot to carefully read this article, question and answer first. So make sure you do.

Worked Exam Question

My child, the fire risk

Regulations that were introduced to care and protect are being used to discriminate against the disabled.

Dea Birkett Friday April 4, 2003   The Guardian

My daughter is a fire hazard. When I called the National Film Theatre to book tickets for both of us, I was told there was no seat for her because of the fire risk she posed. It wasn’t because she’s only 10 — it was a children’s film, after all. It was simply because she uses a wheelchair.

As the Disability Discrimination Act has been extended, making it more and more difficult not to include people with disabilities, health and safety has become the last resort of the exclusion scoundrel. My daughter isn’t the only person with a disability who faces a continual battle to prove that her very existence isn’t a danger to us all. A man was refused gym membership because his diabetes posed “a risk to safety”; another person with a visual impairment was denied admission on the same grounds. When a local leisure centre was taken over by a new management team, she was told she could no longer take part in school swimming classes, even though she had been doing so for the previous two years. The grounds given were that she was “a danger to other children” in the pool. Earlier this year, it took a high court ruling, backed by the Disability Rights Commission, to overturn local authorities imposing blanket bans on home care workers manually lifting any disabled person and deeming all lifting as too “hazardous”. The government has even considered making third-party insurance compulsory for powered-wheelchair users, regarding their mobility aids as a hazard to others. (Disability rights groups point out that shopping trolleys can do just as much damage — will we need insurance to go to the supermarket?)

Health and safety is an easy excuse for those who want to make no effort to include people with a wide range of disabilities. There couldn't be a more effective get-out clause; we’d love to have you here, but it’s dangerous if we do. Not only, we’re told, because disabled people put other people in jeopardy, but because they’re perilous to themselves.

During the firefighters’ strike, many disabled students at universities and colleges across the country found they were barred from attending lectures other than those held on ground floors for fear they would not be able to be evacuated in the event of an emergency, as if they were an incendiary device. This is despite the fact that several wheelchair users escaped safely from the World Trade Centre on September 11, including one woman who was carried down 68 floors. And is my own daughter, a slim 10-year-old, incapable of being safely carried out of a building like the National Film Theatre, if threatened by fire?

We all face risks, and judge how great a risk has to be before it becomes unacceptable. But implicit in the thinking of those who hide behind the excuse of health and safety to exclude is that those with disabilities are somehow more hazardous and more vulnerable than the able-bodied. Disabled people mustn’t just meet the standard of acceptable risk, but be entirely risk free.

Since our visit, the National Film Theatre says it has revised its policy for allocating tickets to wheelchair users. Miraculously, after my vigorous complaint she is no longer a fire hazard! Similarly, the swimming pool has agreed to allow her to continue having lessons with her classmates. Still, being portrayed as a threat to health and safety is a battle every person with a disability has to contend with. But disability is not a danger. The real danger is sanctioning exclusion by the misguided application of health and safety regulations. That’s a hazard we should all be warned against.

Worked Exam Answer

1. Read the article entitled ’My child, the Fire risk.'

a. Write down two facts and one opinion about the treatment of disabled people.

(2 marks)

b. Explain, using your own words, what problems face disabled people, according to the writer.

(3 marks)

2. Choosing three examples from the article, explain the techniques the writer uses to support her argument. (6 marks)