Finishing year 13 in 2017

All done here, paper being binned ,social whirl whirling and I am getting my room back.
The a level / gcse combo has been tough ,who thought the classic 2 year gap was a good idea and I'll be doing it all over again in 2019 with a year off for good behaviour ( I hope)

Thanks Liney and Hippy.

Yes Liney it was FP3 and S2.

Here is a report
Exam board makes last-minute changes to two A-level papers after leak

The latest incident appears to have been localised, as changes were made to papers being sat at what was described as “a small number” of schools and colleges. Students affected were given an extra sheet of replacement questions at the start of the exam.

Current state revision in our house

Truffle DS says it is being reported that two more Edexcel maths exam papers were leaked, although these two were replaced at the last minute. We don't know if it's confirmed or not though.

DS is finished too. Chemistry was his last this morning. He has now gone out with mates to carry out a practical study on the effects of ethanol on the human body.

I have no idea at all how he found any of his exams - he's refusing to be drawn and all mention of A levels has been banned here until 17.08.

Good luck to everyone whether finished or not.

I'm reliably informed I'm an arse. It was RS this morning not history! This is what it has come to, I'm all discombobulated.

Has it been confirmed that C4 was leaked? Or was it a rumour? Haven't heard any more about it.

ono DS was just saying he's heard that history was a bit of a nightmare, too.

He's been messaging his friend who amazingly managed to do the chemistry exam this morning but says it was terrible (OCR) and no longer wants to go to university.

But like Juggling says, there's more to life than exams and uni offers.

Never will I be so glad to get a set of exams out of the way.

I'm sorry to hear about your DS's friend going missing Liney but so glad he has been found. I hope he will now urgently get all the support he needs.

Although this stage is a big step in our young people's lives with a lot of interesting opportunities opening up for them, there is more to life than exams and Uni offers etc.

There could me many interesting and rewarding life paths going forwards from here for all of them

That poor boy! Those poor parents! Far too much pressure on our kids.

Liney, that poor boy! My DS found the pressure tough too and he can cope with most things. I had to drive him into his second History paper to make sure he actually went. It isn't just the STEM subjects that have gone badly, it seems to be most things under the new specifications.

DS officially finished...yippee!!!! History this morning and according to him "it went well" ...so happy, so relieved!

Leavers ceremony on Friday then a gap year beckons.

I'm another one who finds it a bit crazy there are different exam boards. We are in Scotland and the state schools up here have all exams marked by the same board. Can't for the life of me understand why it was ever deemed a good idea to have it any other way.

Dingit - so sorry about your father, you seem to be holding it together remarkably well in the circumstances. Deepest sympathy.

Aqa Chemistry was hard apparently.The multiple choice was easier than normal but the other questions were harder.Nevertheless she's ecstatic she's finished.
LimeyWimey your poor Ds friend.

One of DS's friends has cracked under the pressure. Went missing for two days, parents bereft. He was located very late last night, thank goodness, but he had chemistry this morning.

None of DS's year doing the STEM subjects feel they've done ok. They are really deflated.

It's all just bollocks.

I think it's easier to tell with maths about missed grades though

yes, as it's more obvious if you know you got something wrong or missed something. And it's not been mucked around with got a new specification yet. However, DD was quite surprised by the results of the AS modules - the S1 she wasn't expecting to do that well on, having not even attempted one (smallish) question, but still got 100 ums - others must also have found it hard; otoh she'd dropped more marks on the M1 than she'd thought (silly mistakes, probably).

I'm glad we will all know whether they have places before we get the results.I feel that everything is very up in the air this year.Dd was forecast 2 A* and 1A.She is not positive about even A In any of them.But she is also very hard on herself and has been reluctant to say if any exam has not been hard.

dd liked C3 much more than C4. Lots of variations between exam boards.

My guess is fewer top grades and the uni's adjusting. I think it's easier to tell with maths about missed grades though - DS is quietly confident he's missed the *.

So many of them think they may have missed grades - mine included - that they simply can't all have done. Or grades will be lower across the board and the day before results the uni admissions people will be scrambling to adjust offers, and/or massive clearing job. The universities are not going to want unfilled places!

The last physics exam on Thursday probably is the most likely to be weird, I guess agin as its the one which includes the 'experimental' part as well as the option.

Yes may well be a different board and completely agree that it makes more sense to have one board administering each subject. That idea was floated but ditched.

DS says the same hippy - A almost certainly gone because of a really bad C4 (he liked C3, oddly) even though he got full ums in all the AS papers so was in a pretty good place before then. He said it seems pretty meh to miss an A because of a single paper so I said welcome to the world of exams! It's tough though, no doubt about that.

My dd said the same as Errol's about physics. Yes they were hard, but not horrific. She is expecting horror for the last one on Thursday.

The talk last night was all about how she has no chance of getting an A* in maths due to the disastrous C3 exam and how she hopes Bristol will take her anyway. It's going to be a long wait until August 17th.

Maybe a different board.

I really don't understand why there are different boards within England - it'd surely be fairer and more efficient to have one board. It would make exam timetabling easier too.

Word on the street at our place was that one of the Physics was brutal Errol and at least three potential Oxford/ Cambridge physicists said the same so I'm merely deferring to their judgment! (DS doesn't do Physics). Perhaps they just meant incredibly hard. You're not wrong about the weird Biology though.