Anyone else's kid not expecting a Lady Macbeth question in todays English lit exam

Yes if you want a more diverse texts, dropping Ishiguro seems counter productive surely? But I suppose if schools aren't choosing it as a set text they cant really do anything about that. A shame, its a beautiful book. I did The Color Purple for GCSE 30 years ago. is that still in?

It's a VERY long time since I did my GCSEs (30 years to be precise 🫣), but I distinctly remember our teacher saying, you need to know the text well because past papers from the last few years cannot be relied on to predict what will come up this year! Therefore, you need to be prepared.

We did Macbeth, and I'm pretty sure ours was a Lady M question!

It's not moving to A Level. They dropped the 3 least popular texts to replace with more diverse texts leaving all the ones written by dead white Anglo-Saxon men on the spec still. So no real change in diversity.

You can't make predictions based on what they've done before

Absolutely - bit obscure but London Board A level Greek unseen translation paper had a passage from the same play several years in a row in the 1980s. (Very pleased it was one I'd read!)

Oh I don't know. When I was looking up the criteria for DS it just said ' examined until 2024' It could be being moved to A Level.

My DS said he was going to learn Tissue because o one knows what it's about so you can just make up any old thing! Not sure how true that is! Its probably best if e leartns the most obscure n.I dont know Ive never heard of Tissue!

You can't make predictions based on what they've done before. Also ignore anyone who says the board have said they'll not set Tissue for poetry. This also is NOT true.

Did your child expect Juliet to come up in the exam yesterday? My sister is doing her GCSEs and wasn’t impressed when she saw Juliet! Apparently, the teachers assumed it wouldn’t come up as the paper has been on Juliet for the past 3 years😆

Good luck to all DCs who have exams

@65skelmersdalelane

I think you may have misunderstood me. I appreciate that revising all themes should be obvious.

Your tone is a bit rude to me. Saying it's more nuanced and you can't bring in loads of random stuff! I'm aware of that. Ds1 never did Macbeth, and I think it's quite a hard Shakespeare, that ds2 will be sitting next year. I'm just trying to be supportive and discuss with him that whatever the question, if at all possible you squeeze into your answer all the major themes: good versus evil, the dangers of ambition, the influence of supernatural forces, the contrast between appearance and reality, loyalty and guilt, etc.

Shakespeare's work has been around rather a long time and isn't showing any signs of going out of fashion. Examiners of various kinds have been asking questions about Lady Macbeth for well over 200 years and I suspect will continue to do so for at least a few decades to come.

@DramaLlamaBangBang he’s genuinely enjoyed it, some of his class have found it a challenge though. Is it being dropped or moved to A Level?

I live Never let me go but it's the last year its being used as a set text.

Yes my DS loved the Macbeth but thought the Christmas Carol extract was ' boring'. He said he wrote more on the general themes of the book.

No. No paper leak. People have been saying it will definitely be Kingship for the past 3 years.
The R and J question has been Juliet focused 3 years running. It's just the boards running out of questions that everyone can access.

It wasn't! Some idiots on social media said it would definitely be and some students believed them. It was nonsense.

Never listen to nonsense predictions online. They have never seen the paper. They don't know what the question is. It's bullshit.

Ds had no problems with Lady Macbeth as a topic, he did think the J&H passage they used was a weak one for the question but got lots in.
Paper 2 is his preferred one, they’ve done Never Let Me Go which he really enjoyed- he at least read the whole thing unlike yesterday’s texts 🙄

DD had heard a rumour that it might be kingship but thought it was unlikely as that would be quite a difficult question. As there's no choice on this paper it needs to be a theme that is accessible for the weaker students. She was happy with Lady Macbeth!

... and possible themes within them?

Surely they should prepare all the set texts?

Yes, they all sit at the same time (more or less - very little chance anyone sitting the exam would be able to access TikTok to cheat before their exam starts). What an idiot!

I used to work for an exam board. They will be keeping a close eye on social media for actual leaks, but they wouldn't pull a paper just because of rumours. There are back-ups but not loads, and it's a huge hassle to arrange a new paper being sent out.

Both questions were very open and a gift really. Loads of material to work with for each

My dd thought Kingship as was told it hadn't come up for a while, however she has revised all Macbeth topics, so felt she did ok.

What an idiot that kid is if true. Biology was the first exam, so he's got himself disqualified from all exams just so he could post the paper on tiktok?

I’d always use something different to last years and usually a different theme or character on the basis that exact question isn’t going to come up. But then AQA will do two years running of Juliet so 🤷🏻‍♀️