OCR AS Core 1 Maths today - DD in floods of tears

kitkat I did bump into a further mathematician who sat M2 after C1. He said C1 was fine, but M2 was absolutely horrible. I don't know what the teachers thought of the exam though.

My dd phoned me at 11:30 in floods of tears too

Ah okay I didn't realise that was how it worked Noble so it's reassuring- she usually gets a B in C2 so it's not dreadful, just worse than the other modules and she was hoping to get as close to 100UMS in C1 so that slips wouldn't be as costly and she could still get an overall A. The problem, as you said, is that she's been worrying about university (she wants to be a doctor) and how this will affect her for that instead of focusing on her other exams. It doesn't help that this was the only subject that actually had proper past papers she could do- all her others have a new spec!

dd3 usually gets 100% in C1 past papers and often finishes them with an hour to spare.

For the OCR C1 paper today she didn't have as much time left at the end and couldn't do one of the questions. She figured it out afterwards and said it was more of an 'out of the box' type of question. Her class came out visibly upset with a lot saying that it was terrible so I think the grade boundaries will be adjusted down.

Today my daughter sat Ocr C1. Followed by Home Economics. Closely followed by History. In total 5 and a half hours of exams with 2 half hour breaks in-between. Totally exhausted and demoralised following the maths and has the same timetable next week.

Noble did your school have any students doing OCR M2?

Always if an A is 54/72, then that will get 80 UMS points, exactly the same as 64/72 last year.

DD1 came home after doing this paper and burst into tears too. She'd done every past paper from 2005 and hadn't got less than 90% in any of them, so was very confident going in. It was her first exam and she's now panicking that all the others will be as hard/harder and that she won't meet any of her predicted grades- I hope the boundaries are really low, I think the lowest for an A was 54/72 or something from 2011 so DD's teacher suspects it will at most that. The issue is that she's really weak with C2 and was hoping to make up marks in C1; now it will have to be the other way around.

DS was doing OCR M2 today and said it was much much harder than any previous pape er .He said some did not finiish

Where can you get a copy of the overseas ones to practice on?

I hope all the dc who took the test get the mark they need.

noble several members of my form said the same thing about the paper (I'm not maths, but have a Yr12/13 form) one of the highest performing maths students we have in the school came out a bit shell shocked, so we are going have to do a lot of pep talks! Its not the A/A* targeted ones I'm concerned about but those with a target of C/B as they are the ones that were hoping that this paper will take the pressure of the other ones in terms of combined UMS

I've just sat the paper and it is significantly different to previous years, with far fewer straightforward questions (no 'differentiate this' for example) and some questions have weird answers (like 13/3) which is off-putting because you think you've gone wrong somewhere. If they could make it harder, they have. An odd indices question, completing the square had a negative x^2, the graph transformation wasn't very nice.

The problem wasn't really that this paper was hard though, it was that previous C1 papers have been too easy. You needed 64/72 for an A (and 65 the year before) which is ridiculous when C2 and S1 are mid-50s for an A.

I would expect that the grade boundaries for this paper will be more in line with the other modules this year.

However, it's not just about grade boundaries. Students who have gone into this exam feeling prepared have totally had their confidence knocked. They're now worried that the other papers are going to be much harder too, which is unnerving, and some are worrying about university applications which is not good at the start of the exam season when they need to focus on the next exam.

If this is the one DS1 sat this morning, he said it was easy. I'm wondering if he sat something different now!

My son did edexcel paper this morning. He had regularly been getting 95%+ in practice papers. Said it was much harder this year , so I wouldn't bank on edexcel paper next year being easier!

So if everyone found it hard then the grade boundaries will move down?

Partly true. The number of top grades at AS and A level is being reduced.

Within a few years one would expect that university entry grades will be reduced to reflect the increased difficulty of the revised A levels.

Dreadful english in my previous post! I hope you get the gist! Our school is a high performing independent school and the pupils would all be expected to get A*/A in their Maths.

Maybe I should be more worried about ds who found it to be a good paper - he probably got a lot wrong. I guess there is nothing to be done about it now though, we shall cross that bridge when we get to it - FP1 is on Friday.

Style of questions were different and the level of difficulty had increased significantly. Today's paper was the most difficult paper since 2005 (2 papers a year up to 2010). The whole idea of grade boundaries is to reflect the levels year on year so that a particular year's cohort is not penalised by the level of difficulty. If a young person is confidently getting on average 97% in under an hour for 20 previous years papers then it then it is obvious that the 2016 exam was in any way of equivalent standard. Not a single pupil at our school was able to confidently complete the exam in the full 90 minutes allotted for it.

I don't think there is much to be gained by parents emailing OCR to be honest.

A difficult paper is a good sign for brighter pupls.Low grade boundaries mean careless mistakes (which even the brightest make) don't hammer their grade as much.

My son did OCR Core 1 Maths As today and says it was a disaster. He did 15 past papers last week and got 95 -99% in all of them so he was pretty confident. The paper was nothing like any past papers and he really struggled. Everyone felt the same. I am hoping that the grade boundaries are adjusted to take the level of difficulty into consideration. We will be talking to his school to as not only was this paper a nightmare but it also has left him in a state of shock and no doubt has knocked his confidence for all the other exams coming up in the next few weeks. I have also emailed OCR to ask them what they were playing at!

The Edexcel paper seems to be getting more stick online today than the OCR paper.

Do you think that now there are some linear subjects the exam boards want to make sure that the AS/A2 subjects aren't thought of as less robust?

Thanks, noble. And thanks again for all the very helpful advice and support you gave last year. DS did really well at GCSE in the end.

Today's AS is so bloody frustrating because DS has the ability and did the work.