Compute Science GCSE mess up

I think DD's teacher stated that the problem solving paper would have more weighting if that makes sense?

Dd did state that there was allot of write up involved so I guess the cheats would struggle unless this was also readily available...I know they had a discussion yesterday on how easily it would be to cheat in these type of exams ... a few girls had struggled but would never cheat because it achieves nothing....she did say she hadnt fully completed the whole coding the last part apparently was two part and she has only finished 1/2 of this and just has to finish a little but of her write up today ...she could have finished all of it but they been given initial guidance to take care on the write up.

In terms of marking she said 90% of the papers are marked by the teacher and two sent off for validation ?

My Ds who is doing CS, says that coding is only 8% of the 20% coursework. I think there is a bit of a misconception regarding the qualification that it involves a lot of coding when in actual fact it doesn't.

charlmum

The theory questions can’t change sadly as they were written a year ago. The Consulation document also makes reference to this. What it may well do (ray of hope?!) is change the grade boundaries more favourably. They did this with the difficulty of Maths last year where 28% was a grade 5 so i’m keeping fingers crossed!

Besides, there is a two hour problem solving paper that is full of questions to write coded algorithmic answers to, so their skills won’t be entirely wasted.

Hulababy

Sorry I wasn't clear, I was meaning in lessons not the assessments.

For coding there is no need for students to have access to the internet. It can actually be done (in theory) without ever touching a computer.

DD was supervised in class all the time - teacher very strict and the internet was turned off - BUT apparently the loophole was via Itunes. I think who ever set the exams didnt do there homework properly!
Therefore the results will be worthless ...It will probably mean my DD will miss the grade 9 - although she does know that she has to work allot harder with the theory now and her class teacher thinks the theory questions will change in light of the above.

chantilly

Here it is: enews.pearson.com/rsps/m/2wHOk_SPvoffokIQJGkm5vSl4PF7UJaGZfkcxXP_ETM

It clearly states that anyone who had already started the first task, would be allowed to continue. They just had to complete a questionnaire, get their Headteacher to write a letter and then wait for the inspection date. Believe me, I have been living and breathing all this for a long time now!

Maybe your DD’s school preferred the newer task to the older one and wanted to do that instead?

hantilly your school is wrong or you don’t have the full information. Let me find the statement from EdExcel as proof.

They memorise a bunch of stuff they don't understand for MFL (or at least they used to for the old GCSE) so there's no reason to think that they couldn't memorise some programming stuff to reproduce in test conditions.

As I said before - for those where they do best in the theory they will benefit. Those those, like Dd, who excel in the coding - hey are penalised. Hence no solution offers a fair result for all students.

Dd has absolutely no access to the internet so copy/paste would not be possible. They could only access their assessment work in class time and in class time they were supervised and the internet turned off. I assumed that was the rules. Looks like some schools ignored them.

kittyvoncatsington - Thanks for your information. However my child's school had started one Edexcel task and then had to start another one. Therefore Edexcel did not let every school that had started the original task carry on with it.

Thank you for your further explanation on why the current consultation is taking place.

DD was informed today and the class/teacher are all quite relieved (which surprised me)

There is the other side that the teacher now won’t have to fully mark them (up to 2 hours per candidate) so that might have something to do with it

Asked DD about this and it does not affect IGCSE.

The IGCSE doesn’t have any NEA or coursework of any kind so won’t be. Sadly, the qualification doesn’t count in the league tables, buckets/Progress 8 so generally state schools won’t offer it. I’d love to have been able to do the IGCSE!

DS is half way through the 20 hours and they are all really pissed off.

It does seem a bit rubbish that they will now be assessed solely through computing theory, with no practical coding at all!

Asked DD about this and it does not affect IGCSE.

DD was informed today and the class/teacher are all quite relieved (which surprised me) that the consultation is going ahead and are hoping that the recommendations go ahead. The teacher was worried that the grade boundaries would be high with all the cheating and therefore this would have a negative result for all their class. Dd does not think anyone cheated in fact a few of the girls really struggled and I know DD had a few problems where she had made silly errors -
which she had to correct. Thankfully DD finishes her 20 hours tomorrow and they can therefore now concentrate on the theory aspect. DD did state that their controlled assessment was not foolproof and whilst controls had been put in place anyone could have still copied and pasted coding had they known there was information available on the internet... so whilst I was initially concerned because coding is DD's strong point - I am not relieved ..

chantilly - not quite true at all. Just before Half Term, EdExcel changed tasks. The reason for this is that the task did not have a gold padlock on it to access but a silver one.m on the website to access with a username and password. This meant that Exams Officers in schools not doing EdExcel could download it as well. Not that there was any evidence any had.
Computer Science teachers for that exam board therefore kicked up a fuss about this (including me-spent most of my Half term talking to the Head of Assessment at Pearson. We do anything for our students!) and on the Thursday of that Half Term, they agreed those that already started could continue and have an inspection to check we complied with this, instead.

This current debacle came to light when it was found that some people were selling solutions online (abroad I might add) for another exam board and this escalated.

I have already had to help my students once. I am quite frankly exhausted to do it again but have completed the document for the Consulation and can only hope.

Is this the result of the Edexcel computer science issue a few weeks ago?

No. It specifically says in the consultation as a footnote that that was down to the access levels being available to Exams Officers in schools not doing the EdExcel version having access to it and is not the reason for this Consulation and not down to student cheating or posting solutions doing the EdExcel task.

The examples of malpractice stated in the Consulation have all come from one exam board that I won’t mention but is the one most use. It does mean that all Exam Boards are affected by this decision as OFQUAL can’t be certain other exam boards haven’t also had leaks.

Oops! Wrong thread!

Thanks everyone. The reason I said I think it's unlikely that they will let her withdraw is that the only arguments we have would equally apply to the whole class. I think if it was just her who had an issue it might be different.

I will see how the mock goes in January and maybe speak to the school after that.

sashh - but they wouldn't be able to cut and paste if not accessing the internet in the lesson, as per the rules. If they are accessing outside of the classroom, they'd need to be remembering it to type it in later. If they are using the internet to fid the answers in class then that is a centre based issue and a big one at that.

appuskidu - it would appear so, yes.

katy mac - yes, though it was more than just the oral part I believe. It was a 20% competent again I believe. They still do the oral component now but again, it doesn't count. But equally they don't spend 20 hours on it either. Shame it doesn't countt really as DD got a distinction in hers, but that doesn't count and it isn't recorded in any way either I don't think. I know when I did mine when GCSEs had just started we got a letter grade for the English lit exam and a number grade for the oral component.

Didn't something in English happen like this? I remember DD did something possibly an oral got an amazing mark then they decided not to use those marks; she was gutted

Will this affect all exam boards?

One thing to say, any time spent coding is not a waste of time. Ye it is crap if it is not included in the exam but they still have the experience of coding.

Having said that lots of students do copy and paste. If I give them an example to use followed by 'try this yourself' I often include some code that doesn't fdo much - counts to 10 or prints a blank line to screen. If the student's work comes back with this still in it I know it is not their own work.

Maybe something like giving students a program to debug in a shorter length of time, or 5 x 2 hour slots with different tasks would be an option for the future.

I don't know. Dd isn't doing edexcel I don't think.

Is this the result of the Edexcel computer science issue a few weeks ago? It was found out that information for the project was available online so all schools using Edexcel had to start another project. Sounds as though the second project won't be counting either!