Year 11 GCSE thread continued!

Lancelottie - dd did edexcel today. She says it was grim and yes he probably won't have seen the last question before because she'd only seen it from the Further Maths works she's done. There was also a question which required them to be able to convert km in to miles first. This is NOT on the specification. Dd has made a stab at it based on remembering a conversion she saw on TopGear!

Lancelottie ds says that was edexcel, the pigs paper and the one giving out prizes every 2014 seconds

I can't remember what board he's doing (bad parent) but the final question was on 'y = a sin bx + c'

Despite claiming never to have seen anything like it before, he would appear to have made a good stab at it (b wrong but a and c right, if what he remembered was right).

Why did I not know before today that DS has no idea how to do simultaneous equations?

He was very pleased with himself because 'One came up, and I bunged in likely numbers over 25 until it worked, and it did!' (and he got the right answer, I checked).

I'm hoping his illegible handwriting might disguise his method enough to get him a mark.

AQA maths here. Universal opinion was that it was awful.

Well after forcing DS to actually go and do this Maths paper, he says the first half was easy, second half trickier.

Glad the school changed to EDEXL this year, so its the best mark out of both exams (he did Maths earlier this year too), rather then the latest that is given.. We wouldn't have risked it today otherwise.

From what DD said the calculator paper needs to be a bit harder or the grade boundaries are going to be very high.

Their last question was sine, cosine graphs or something. She says set one were muttering about them as they were waiting to go in. She's never done them, but he dad has waffled about such things.

Ds1 did AQA maths today. He thought it was ok - standard reply!

(She needs an A*, wants to do Maths A level).

DD thought the maths paper hard in places, but not as bad as it could have been. She tried to count up her marks and thinks she has enough for an A, maybe an A*, depending on grade bounsaries. Is this the paper with the pigs? (Trending on Twittwr too, apparently!)

If they don't get a C in GCSE Maths, do they have to resit next summer? Or can they take it again later this year?
Or does it depend on the individual's sixth form?

does anyone know because knowing would relieve the pressure on my poor DD who is convinced she has done really badly and is worried that she will be stuck doing maths GCSE over and over again for the rest of her life....

It's OK Unexpected my DD thought it was great too

Oh dear - we can feel insecure together

In OCR the last question was
express 1000/root2 in form a rootb

x top and bottom by root 2 to give 1000 root2/2
= 500 root2

surds are most definitely on teh syllabus!

My DS did Edexcel maths last year, and I can say that the last few questions were hard then and are meant to sort the men out from the boys so to speak. At least there are only 2 papers now they have gone linear.

What is a surd?

something divided into 3

Oh Lord! DS1 is home from Edexcel Maths and thought it was soooo gooood (from his text). While this should fill me with joy, reading all the messages on here from other people's DC, just makes me feel he must have mis-read the questions or forgotten the last few pages or something!

DD1 thought Edexcel (linear, higher) was easy, except for the last question, which they hadn't done. She says she put an educated guess.

She says no one used their extra time. Which she usually devours because she doesn't know her tables. (She can do trig, but has to scribble her 3xtable in the margin and she still can't read a analogue clock reliably.)

Waves to bests DS and hopes he got a nice paper.

Text from DD about Edexcel maths paper ' was ok, not great but not too bad' .

I think that means she did OK!

Today's maths paper included stuff that is not on the syllabus.
The whole class found the last question impossible, so some comfort there.

DD had been doing past papers comfortable with 35 minutes to spare, this morning she ran out of time

Another Edexcel maths here - harder than she would have liked but "not impossible." Lots of problem solving questions apparently. Hopefully the calculator paper will be nice and easy

ds said maths (edexcel) not as bad as expected but everyone found it hard, even the boffins were complaining. One of his mates hoping to do A level maths thinks he's now screwed.

According to ds it started off as beyond obvious and slowly got harder until the last two questions which were nigh on impossible. The last one was "like something off of university challenge and it took me ages just to work out what they wanted me to do" Thankfully no need for 37, the number he puts down whenever he doesn't know the answer.

He had been hoping to scrape an A if it had been a good paper which he's certain he's now missed but still seems more relaxed than his friends. Not sure that's a good sign but I'm happy he did what he could

Edexcel maths Ds texted 'good' and then some chat about forgetting his dinner money. DS's GF texted 'absolutely horrendous, I think I've failed my entire life :( :(" ... Fingers crossed for all those desperately hoping for a C! I looked at a past paper yesterday and it was way way over my head!