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Error on English literature GCSE paper

14 replies

indaba · 26/05/2017 20:10

Listening to news just now one of the education boards has had to apologise for making a mistake on the English Lit GCSE paper. Mistaken identity of families in Romeo & Juliet. Fundamental error. How does this happen? I am so annoyed for the poor children. It was decided two years ago that R&J was on this years syllabus.....they have had two years to get this right! Really appalling. Ok, no one died but really! Feel better for off loading that.

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Lineyy · 26/05/2017 20:15

DS just read out this news story to me. He's doing A levels - says if that had happened in his GCSE exam he'd have been so disconcerted that he'd likely have fucked up the whole exam.

It's a weird error as well.

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Lineyy · 26/05/2017 20:17

Oh hang on ... Denise is taking her Eng Lit GCSE today on Eastenders. She's smiling. She hasn't spotted the error.

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Janek · 26/05/2017 20:22

There are two. Romeo and Juliet was on Monday.

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Lineyy · 26/05/2017 20:26

What will the exam board do?

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BuzzLightyearsHoneyBun · 26/05/2017 20:30

OCR did Romeo and Juliet today- and made the very silly mistake. AQA did R&J on Monday and paper 2 lit today.
Luckily our school do AQA as that mistake must have thrown so many students.

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JigglyTuff · 26/05/2017 20:53

I heard a spokesperson say that it wouldn't affect the children's grades. How on earth can they say that? Every kid would have spent ages trying to figure out if they were wrong or the paper was. How do you decide how many extra marks you award for that?

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Wolfiefan · 26/05/2017 20:54

FFS. Of course it will affect grades. How stupid can they be?! Shock

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PippaFawcett · 26/05/2017 20:55

What is the protocol if a teacher spots the error? I presume they aren't allowed to point it out to the assembled children?

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SallyGardens · 26/05/2017 21:02

Do they not issue corrections when errors are spotted?

In Ireland, if a potential error like this is spotted, the student is told to tell the invigilator who can then contact the State Exams Commission. If it is an error, a text message goes out to all schools' exam co-ordinators who pass the message on to the invigilators. Takes about 30 minutes max from experience.

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JigglyTuff · 26/05/2017 21:46

It's a long time since I took GCSEs Sally but I don't think the teachers get sight of the papers in advance - they open the envelope at exactly the same time in every school around the country.

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indaba · 26/05/2017 22:09

and now I am going to rant further.....listening to news headlines on Radio 4.....head teacher interviewed... said the incorrect question was worth 25% of the papers marks!!!

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SallyGardens · 27/05/2017 01:23

It's the same here Jiggly, everyone gets the paper at the same time and there could be 30,000 taking the same paper.

It still works - I've been invigilating for 10+ years and we either get an erratum from the proof-readers on a separate booklet or a text to the school (followed up by an email) if it's not spotted until the exam has started.

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amybear100 · 29/05/2017 12:12

They will do lots of standardisation calculations tmake sure candidtes are fairly compensated

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indaba · 29/05/2017 19:55

Yes I get that but the issue is some kids will cope differently. Some will freak out there is an incomprehensible question. Others won't notice. It's ridiculous. Someone should do Thor job properly.

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