Mock exam "cheating"???

Very lazy of the school, there are papers on the non accessible part of AQA, or you can make your own by blending.
I find it intensely irritating to mark papers where the kids have memorised the mark scheme, they don't really learn anything. I do make them do lots of past questions but that is only valuable if they are actually thinking about the answers rather than just learning a script. You can always tell as the m/s answers are much briefer than your average kids, also they sometimes muddle the sequence so it makes no sense at all, or they write down points 1 and 3 for a two marker but 3 is dependent on the statement made in point 2. Often at this point when you are going through their papers with them they get annoyed because you gave them no credit, then they let slip their little "secret"
Your ds will be annoyed now, not unreasonably but he has the better start for next year.

Well, the issue there is that SAM papers are compromised by being available online.

Actually, for year 10s facing a scary new paper I think there's an argument for going easy on them. I've told our cohort that the choice of non fiction texts for English language is down to five, not ten. For literature it's 3 poems, not 15.

I want to analyse their exam technique at this point, not out face them & set them up to fail.

What they can't be allowed to do is parrot a MS they have off by heart. It's not preparing them for the exam next year, & it won't work for them anyway in my subject. The MS isn't a model set of answers - it's bullet points to guide the examiner.

Those last year who had had access to the paper & MS did crashingly badly, as their essays simply didn't make sense.

Exam boards have provided sample papers for new exams so I am really surprised schools have not used them for year 10. Yes past papers are vital - except for this poor Year group who are sitting unknown exams with unknown grade boundaries and unknown mark schemes. I am a teacher and a parent of year 10 & I would quite happily do damage to the idiot who decided to mark science like it was an English exam.

I've just written our y10 English language & literature papers by pasting different anthology texts & different questions into a pdf of the Sam, so it looks like the real thing. Took me 2 days.

Last year (old spec) I used the previous January's secured paper & half the year had accessed it via unscrupulous tutors - only takes one exam officer /teacher in charge of IGCSE to download it & make it available, say by using with their y11s, & it's going to be out there.

Creating your own paper is a PITA (& means teachers marking don't have a proper MS) but it's the only way to avoid this happening.

I'd be very surprised at teachers not knowing they were available. But by using the only ones there they are saving themselves time and effort, but then you are highly likely to get this scenario. It is the school who have made the error imo.
The children themselves took a risk and no, it won't benefit them if all they've done is memorise the answer paper. But it's not cheating when many teachers actually advise using past papers as a legitimate revision technique.

But they are the only sample/past paper options available to the children at the moment? I have encouraged Dd to use them.

As it happens, so far anyway as have a day to go, none of the year 10 exams have been these same papers.

I think a school would be daft to use the only published sample as their mock personally. It's obvious children will use them.

Usually last years papers are locked for 12 months. Trouble is it's now 12 months and so AQA have unlocked 2016. School need to do their year 10 exams earlier or make their own papers. I'm surprised they didn't use the new style ones that AQA provided for year 10s as last years are very different to next. Personally I hate the new GCSE Mark scheme - am hoping it is 'modified' before next year.

I think there is quite a bit of a difference between using various past papers as practice, and twigging that the mock will be on a particular past paper and doing all the revision based on that specific paper.

The latter isn't cheating but I don't think it helps the DC in the long run.

Dd is doing end of y10 exams at the moment and, in addition to general revision and work books etc, we did print of sample papers - no real past papers as all new. We used the mark schemes to check answers and work out where she'd gone wrong on some questions. I don't see thy as cheating though. Doing past papers has always been a known and legitimate way of revising.

I know it's hard for schools to set their own exams at the moment as it's the first year, but they can't blame school kids for using perfectly legitimate revision aids.

"DS revised "properly" for the exams using the text books, revision guides and revising his work done in the past couple of years. He did it the way he'll be doing it for the proper external exams, so good practice for the real thing."

If he was doing it as if he were preparing for the real thing he would be looking at past papers too, that would be part of the revision process for exams generally, wouldn't it? It certainly is for me with the OU (even though we have to buy past papers in order to do so).

I would tell him the only person they are cheating is themselves. He knows what he really would get in an exam - they don't, yes it's falling if they gloat about their high marks but next year guess who gets the last laugh.

Well dd took the gamble and it paid off. She sat the specimen paper today with the exact questions she was expecting.

I think it's probably done her confidence a load of good. She will probably still only get a 4 or 5 but English is her weakest subject and she needed to practice structuring an answer. Given that they've only covered 2 acts of romeo and juliet I think she'd have floundered if she'd tried to revise everything.

I won't be encouraging her to find past papers for any of her other subjects though.

It's a marathon not a sprint.
They will get artificially high grades for their mocks but will probably struggle with an unseen paper. In the end, memorizing a previous year's exam will only get you so far and hopefully your don's hard work will pay off when he does the real thing.

Just to add. What they did was a big gamble, because it could have gone completely the other, luckily for them it paid off. Personally I would have done both I.e revise like your DS did but also cast an eye over the marking scheme.

Why didn't he do the same ?
They didn't cheat, the marking scheme was available to print off, the students used careful logic to guess it might be the same questions and it paid off. They didn't have questions secretly smuggled to them.

It is also in my subject of maths fairly easy to spot. Some teenagers are smart but not that bright - ie the ones who answered perfectly the question on a topic my set hadn't been taught - was in the exam for higher groups and I had warned my class there would be some topics we hadn't covered yet.

I have had students who when asked in class can't answer a question but get 90%+ on past papers!

Whilst I understand the frustration about the awards - your son has really done the best thing.

As a tutor I spoke to the school about which papers they were planning to use and have avoided them.

But the cheats are only cheating themselves and rewards are empty when they are not earned. I would encourage your ds to concentrate on his own studies....it won't be as easy to get easy marks in the real thing and that's all he has to think about - working hard for the real thing!

Nothing to have stopped him doing the same though.

OCR keep theirs back until the results day the year after, so last year's papers appear this August.

AQA and Edexcel's papers appeared sometime at the start of this month.

Oh OK. I think they should hold them back, must make schools' lives hard.
I still think your DS shouldn't worry too much as it is only themselves they are harming by only learning exact answers to questions that won't come up next year!

It does depend on the subject. However, mock are just a check point. I think they are over sold and there is too much pressure placed on them. They should be just like any other assessment. Students do themselves no favours in the long term by taking short cuts for their mocks. The teachers need an accurate measure of their progress, which is all a mock should be.

TeenAndTween

AQA doesn't hold back past papers (although I know Edexcel does).