Text 1: The room between two buses, by Nia Pritchard
An original contemporary newspaper article.
At quarter past three each weekday, the former parcel office beside Cwmderi station fills with pupils. The building, now called the Junction Hall, has six desks, broadband, four tablet computers and two volunteers on duty until the last school bus leaves.
Fifteen-year-old Mali Rees arrives carrying an exercise book and a half-finished model bridge. She lives in one of the villages beyond Cwmderi. Pupils who stay for revision or sports miss the 4.05 bus, and the next one leaves at 6.20. The school gates are locked at four.
Mali checks an online lesson on one of the hall’s tablets. “The signal at our house comes and goes, and my brothers and I all use Mam’s phone,” she says. At the next desk, a volunteer is helping two younger pupils understand the instructions for a science project.
The hall does not charge an entrance fee. On wet evenings, coats hang from every peg and the windows cloud over as pupils wait for the bus home.
Text 2: An evening at the mechanics’ institute, by A Correspondent
An original newspaper report written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.
In this newspaper report from 1876, a journalist visits a mechanics’ institute in a manufacturing town.
At eight o’clock on Tuesday evening, though the furnaces had scarcely grown dim, the reading room of the Mill Street Institute was well occupied. Men from the ironworks sat with newspapers, account books and volumes on machinery beneath the gas lamps.
In an adjoining room, Mr Pritchard, a schoolmaster, gave instruction in arithmetic and mechanical drawing. Among his pupils was Elias Ward, aged nineteen, who left day school at eleven. His foreman has lately informed him that any man seeking a place in the pattern room must be able to read a scale drawing and keep accurate figures.
Ward lodges with another family and shares a small attic with two fellow workmen. Candles are not permitted there after nine o’clock. The Institute, however, remains open until ten, and membership costs one penny a week.
When the lesson ended, several men remained to copy diagrams or consult the books before beginning their walk home.
Using information from both texts, explain briefly how the closure of each building would create different difficulties for the people who use it.
You should make it clear which text you are referring to.
123 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 2.3 Summary and synthesis, covering 2.3.3 Synthesising from more than one text. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.