Both texts below are newly written practice sources about invented projects.
Text One: An original account of an invented museum trial.
For six weeks, a small museum replaced its usual Thursday opening of 10.00–16.00 with an opening of 14.00–20.00. The total opening time remained six hours. The coordinator hoped that people unavailable during the working day would visit, but she also wanted to know whether regular visitors would simply change the time of an existing visit.
The six evening sessions received 312 visits. At sign-in, 126 people described themselves as first-time visitors. Another 74 were regular visitors who said that they had moved a visit they would normally have made on a different day. The museum could not establish what the remaining 112 visitors would have done without the evening opening.
The coordinator believed that the trial had widened access. Several visitors explained that daytime work or caring responsibilities had previously prevented them from attending. However, she warned against treating every evening visit as an additional visit because some familiar visitors were clearly transferring their usual attendance.
There were practical consequences too. Two regular volunteers were unable to work in the evening, so the museum paid an assistant to cover the final three hours. The last local bus left five minutes after the museum closed, which made the session less convenient for visitors who needed public transport. The coordinator recommended judging the trial through changes in the weekly audience and the kinds of visitor reached, rather than through the evening door count alone.
Text Two: Attendance records from a separate fictional gallery trial.
The gallery alternated between its standard opening of 10.00–16.00 and an evening opening of 14.00–20.00. There were no special events or group bookings during the four recorded weeks.
| Week | Thursday opening | Thursday visits | Visits during the whole week | First-time visitors on Thursday | Evening questionnaires returned | Respondents unable to attend 10.00–16.00 | Additional paid staffing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10.00–16.00 | 48 | 226 | 9 | — | — | 0 hours |
| 2 | 14.00–20.00 | 73 | 241 | 28 | 49 | 22 | 3 hours |
| 3 | 10.00–16.00 | 52 | 229 | 11 | — | — | 0 hours |
| 4 | 14.00–20.00 | 69 | 238 | 25 | 46 | 20 | 3 hours |
A dash indicates that the evening questionnaire was not used during a daytime opening. The questionnaire was voluntary.
Synthesise the evidence from both texts to evaluate whether a museum should replace one six-hour daytime opening with a six-hour evening opening. Your response should consider whether the change widens access or mainly moves existing visits to a different time.
528 exam-style questions on WJEC GCSE English Language 3.1 Section A (20%) – Reading, covering 3.1.1 Understanding description, narration and exposition texts, 3.1.2 Range of continuous and non-continuous texts, 3.1.3 Short and extended response question types, and 3.1.4 Editing task at word, sentence and text level. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.