different exam boards for GCSEs

[ucannotbserious]

Does anyone know which exam boards are supposed to be easier or more challenging than others? My son has been told (apparently!)that if he gets a C in the boards that he is doing, it is the equivalent to an A or B in some other boards. Is this just wishful thinking? Also, does anyone know if one particular board will offer different qualifiactions in the same subject - ie would OCR for example, offer more than one GCSE in any given subject? I know about foundation/higher tiers and know he isn't talking about that.

[gramercy]

When I was at school and taking exams in the early 80s, our school insisted on Oxford Board, and said that other exam boards were frowned upon by universities. There was a bit of a furore over this at the time when it transpired that another local school was using an exam board whose maths exam was much easier, and consequently their pupils were getting better grades.

Surely they must be standardised now? You can't have one person having to do differential calculus for one GCSE board and getting a B and someone else doing basic fractions and getting an A.

[lydiane]

I used to be an exams administrator and there is no difference between the boards if the qualification is the same. it is standardised.

[inthesticks]

My son is doing GCSE maths a year early in year 10. He is only in year 9 now but apparently they sit the first exam paper in March 2010.
He asked me to get him some practice papers and when I googled practice GCSE papers it opened up a whole new world to me. There seem to be so many different exam boards and then within those there any many different papers.
I wonder whether the curriculum is much different from one board to another?

[30andLurking]

Mine used to pick and choose, so we ended up sitting at least 3 different boards' exam papers (to make life hard, not easy!)

[ucannotbserious]

Pixie, do you really think that some schools don't know teh value of the exams they enter their pupils for? Whilst I was questioning the accuracy of a teenage boy, I would like to think that his scholl know what they are doing!

[ucannotbserious]

OK, I see what you mean!

[niamhanddanismum]

A friend of mine who went to private school was told by her school (and often repeated to us) that her exmas were harder than ours because those of us at state school couldn't possibly be expected to reach the same high standards as her. She to this day believes this is why I have better GCSE and Alevel grades than her! Lets face it, if this was the case who would send their child to private school. Why would any school want to make things harder for their pupils. As a teacher I always tried to make things as easy as possible for my classes and I would have chosen an easy exam board if I could! They are all more or less the same.

[30andLurking]

Ours really did make life harder for you if they could... those in the bottom sets of some subjects sometimes sat different boards' papers.

I think the theory was if you were going to be studying medicine (say), then they'd make sure your sciences and maths came from (what they perceived to be) the toughest boards for university admissions. But if you were just doing GCSE maths cos you had to, they'd find you an 'easier' paper do keep their stats up.

No idea if it worked then or now!