IGCSE English 0500: Evaluating Bias. The Ashcombe Pool Closure

Read the following opinion piece, then answer the questions that follow.

The council calls it "rationalisation." Everyone else in Ashcombe calls it what it actually is: abandoning the only place in town where a child from a struggling family can learn to swim for free.

Ashcombe Leisure Centre's public pool has taught local children to swim for thirty-seven years. Now the council wants to close it and instead offer residents a "discounted" membership to Vantage Fitness, a private gym across town that charges thirty-two pounds a month even after the promised reduction. Try telling a single parent working two jobs that thirty-two pounds a month is a saving.

The council's own figures show the pool runs at a loss of £40,000 a year. A number they repeat at every meeting as though it settles the argument. What they do not mention nearly so often is that the borough spent £1.2 million last year resurfacing the high street car park, a project used by far fewer residents than the pool is. Apparently some "losses" are acceptable and others are not.

Nine children in Ashcombe Primary's Year 4 class alone cannot yet swim, according to their class teacher. Where exactly are they supposed to learn once the pool shuts, in the river, unsupervised, because their families cannot afford Vantage Fitness's rates? Drowning is one of the biggest causes of accidental death in children, and this council is proposing to remove the one place in Ashcombe where poorer children can learn, for free, not to become one of those statistics.

Close the pool, and Ashcombe will not save money. It will simply move the cost somewhere far more serious than a spreadsheet.

(a) Identify two persuasive techniques used in the passage (other than emotive word choice) and explain the effect each has on the reader. [4] (b) Explain one way in which the writer's argument is one-sided and does not present a balanced case. [2] (c) Using evidence from the passage, assess how convincing you find the writer's argument, giving one strength and one weakness of the case as it is presented. [2]

Assessment focus

This question moves from spotting individual techniques to evaluating an argument as a whole: recognising the tools of persuasion being used, identifying what has been left out or unfairly framed, and forming a judgement, supported by evidence, about how convincing and how balanced the writing actually is.

Part (a): Persuasive techniques

Beyond emotive word choice, this passage layers several classic techniques of argument:

Selective comparison: setting the pool’s £40,000 annual loss against the council’s £1.2 million car park resurfacing invites the reader to conclude the council is applying a double standard, without ever establishing that the two spending decisions are actually comparable in scale, purpose or necessity.
Rhetorical question: “Where exactly are they supposed to learn once the pool shuts. In the river, unsupervised…?” is not a genuine question but a way of implying a dangerous consequence while leaving the writer able to say they never stated it as fact.
Anecdote treated as general evidence: the figure of nine non-swimmers in a single Year 4 class is a small, local detail generalised into a town-wide argument about children’s safety.
Alarming statistic: framing drowning as “one of the biggest causes of accidental death in children” raises the emotional stakes attached to the closure decision.

Strong answers name the technique precisely (not simply “the writer uses evidence”) and explain the effect on the reader’s judgement, not just what the technique is.

Part (b): One-sidedness

The passage presents the decision as a simple binary (close the pool exactly as it stands, or keep it exactly as it stands) and never engages with the council’s own reasoning for considering the change beyond quoting the loss figure dismissively. No alternative solution (adjusted hours, shared funding, a means-tested subsidy) is considered, and the council’s side of the argument is only ever paraphrased, never quoted directly. This narrows the reader’s sense of the available options and makes the writer’s conclusion feel like the only reasonable one.

Part (c): How convincing is the argument?

A balanced evaluation credits both the argument’s construction and its evidential weaknesses. It is built to feel well-evidenced, using specific numbers throughout, and it appeals effectively to a value most readers share (children’s safety). But its key figures are attributed only to “the council’s own figures” and an unnamed teacher, its central comparison (pool loss vs car park spend) is rhetorically forceful without being logically established, and it never seriously entertains that the council might have reasons beyond simple cost-cutting.

Common pitfalls specific to this text

Candidates often treat the £40,000/£1.2 million comparison purely as an emotive detail rather than naming it as a technique (selective/unfair comparison) in its own right.
Some candidates assume that because a figure is stated as a fact (“thirty-two pounds a month”), it must be reliable, without noticing that no source is given for it either.