Pupils ‘triggered’ by question about calories
Students complain that exam question on weight of food was distressing to those with eating disorders
AN EXAM board has said that students can complain if they felt “triggered” by a calorie-counting question.
Pupils protested that the Maths GCSE question – about how many calories a woman had consumed for breakfast – was distressing for anyone who has struggled with an eating disorder. One student said that her sister, a recovering anorexic, was forced to leave the exam due to the question.
The question said: “There are 84 calories in 100g of banana. There are 87 calories in 100g of yogurt. Priti has 60g of banana and 150g of yogurt for breakfast. Work out the total number of calories in this breakfast”.
Following the concerns, Pearson, which owns the exam board Edexcel, carried out a review of the question and found it to be valid. A spokesman for Pearson said that any student “who thinks that this question may have impacted their performance” should make contact via their school.
Poppy-willow Kent, a student from Colchester, wrote on Twitter: “I am sorry, but can I ask what on Earth you were thinking by having a question around counting calories? Your exams
‘The question brought back so many memories… it put me into a panic where I had to leave the room’
are primarily taken by 15-20 year olds, who are also the age group most likely to suffer from eating disorders.”
A 16-year-old student from Hampshire added: “The weighing food and calorie question on the paper today triggered me so much… It just brought back so many bad memories for me that I was about to cry.”
Meanwhile, Isobel Colclough, 16, from Stoke-on-trent, said: “I read the question and it brought back so many memories of counting calories, it put me into a panic where I had to leave the room for about five minutes and a teaching assistant calmed me down.
“I did manage to finish the exam but it stayed on my mind for quite a while after. For someone who has in the past been obsessed with counting calories, it definitely triggered memories of counting everything.”
Miss Colclough, who used to be anorexic, said she is considering making a formal complaint about the question.
Tom Quinn, a director at Beat, an eating disorder charity, said that references to counting calories “can be triggering” for anyone with or recovering from an eating disorder.
He said it could “cause significant distress”, adding that since young people were “most at risk of these serious mental illnesses”, exam boards should avoid such material in their questions.
A spokesman for Pearson said: “We have reviewed the question and find it to be valid. We encourage any student who thinks that this question may have impacted their performance to get in contact with us via their school.”
It is the latest exam question to have prompted debate this summer. AQA, the exam board, came under fire from students for a GCSE English exam which used a passage from a book in which a character was later raped.
Pupils complained that the unseen text in their exam paper was taken from a story that later goes on to detail how a young woman becomes pregnant after being sexually exploited by her employer.
The description of the rape was not part of the excerpt in the exam paper, but students nonetheless protested that the excerpt should have come with a “trigger warning”.
The AQA denied that the choice of extract was inappropriate.