Anger over AQA GCSE Higher Biology - any info?

ha! DS mentioned last night that kids in his class were complaining the exam didn't have anything to do with biology.

Except DS felt strongly that it all had everything to do with biology. This is my feckless DS not a teacher's pet. And that his classmates were being silly. From the Qs described to me, I agree with DS. DS also thought the questions were fairly straightforward, that people were expecting more than was there.

One is reminded of the faux-outrage about Hannah's Sweets where you can't help thinking "really? That's a perfectly respectable mid-level GCSE question?"

Dd has confirmed that the question relating to giving rats alcohol was in the context of testing a drug designed to combat alcohol addiction and concedes that the independent company question was covered in the "how science works" unit.

She is of the opinion that a lot of the outrage is bandwagon jumping & that people should move on as they can't change anything now! Pleasantly surprised at her attitude tbh!

Dd1 is Yr 10 and sat the AQA B1 paper yesterday yesterday she said she'd thought she'd done ok but that there was a lot of stuff they haven't been taught.

It was this morning she told me about the independent company question; it seems they were asked what an independent company is rather than why one is used. Not sure about the wording/question of drunk rats/15 year olds questions but have a feeling that the purpose was to interpret data relating to legal & illegal drugs which is part of the syllabus.

Are you the journalist who wrote the article you have linked to OP or are you a parent (or possibly a teacher)?
Agree with tiggy that the transition year argument isn't correct when current Y10s are taking the same GCSE course (and there may possibly be a resit paper later on as well).
I think that shanghai is correct what the pupils are supposed to do is apply what they know to a new (unfamiliar) situation.
They shouldn't worry about future papers as different papers are written by different examiners.

Personally I don't think it's a good idea to encourage students to worry about the other papers - worrying achieves nothing.
Perhaps we should consider if questions are related to the syllabus and involved application of knowledge rather that regurgitating facts.
What has happened is over - if generally performance was low then the grade boundaries will reflect this.
It's important as pp said that students keep their cool and apply their knowledge. Very often in life things don't go according to plan and there is no point in becoming indignant about it - adapt and move on - encouraging students to get in a tizz about future exams is not helpful imo.

On a serious note though my dd is now really worried as she thinks she hasn't done well and all the questions she had they hadn't even covered or was to do with biology x

m.youtube.com/watch?v=s0b841aq1UA

Ds1 thought it was ok. He is very amused by the outrage though. These kids have a fantastic sense of humour.

We enjoyed the Twitter comments and memes.

dd was amused/bemused but thought the outrage was overdone - so long as you kept your cool about answering the questions...

yep same here. My DC said it bore no relation to the past papers that they have all been spending time on. I think this is being treated as a transition year by the examiners with questions that are more relevant to the new syllabus so that the kids doing exams next year have some relevant past papers to use. just my personal view based on discussions with markers etc.

My DS was a bit bemused by it all when he got home last night
He revised so hard but they threw in questions about independent companies and the drinking habits of 15 year olds.
He's not alone - all his friends felt the same, which I suppose is comforting to know.