Y11 2023-24 thread 4

@Paperclipp my DS said he couldn’t be confident he’d got a single questions right on FM 😂 luckily he saw the funny side! It’s a new one for his school and they’ve just been doing a lunchtime session since January to cover it so it’s a bit of a wild card for us!

@Newlease no problem, pm me any questions or queries! While a lot of people do go for a stint overseas (us included) there’s a huge array of decent avenues here too 👍

The hexagon/circle question was not that bad when you have time and space to think about it. Obviously in an exam setting, it’s a question that’s nothing like previous years. So would throw most kids into panic.
DD read about it one of the chats, and she came to me( not her exam board) Took her time, I read it out loud and she went ah! And managed to get to answer.
But also said she would only finish it, if there was enough time. Def a question differentiating the high few percentages. saying that many would be able to get 1/2 marks on it, may not finish. If I start with that question in exam setting, I would keep thinking about it and get others wrong too 😢
The mathematically correct angle one, is something I don’t really care if I am writing the exams( decades ago, questions were just that, didn’t have to be policitay correct) You just find the answer-x. But DD keep on changing the answers/methods on few occasions beacuse it doesn’t sound logically correct. What do others do please? Would like to know what others think about it

Because it didn't exist. It's why they now exist.

Thanks for explaining the three issues @Paperclipp

That's horrendous and really puts things into perspective 😔

Contingency days weren’t introduced until (I think) 2019.

Contingency day wasn't used for Grenfell. Those poor kids sat their exams the next day and the days after. I remember seeing a girls with her chemistry revision notes going to an exam when she had no home to go to and was in emerg next accomodation.

@Panic71 This is what the official bulletin said about 2023 results:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/guide-to-gcse-results-for-england-summer-2023#:~:text=Overall%20GCSE%20results%20are%20similar,compared%20with%2067.0%25%20in%202019.

Are the rates of particular grades very different now compared to 2019?

No. If it happens, it will be grade distribution.

I keep hearing about a return this year to 2019 pre covid levels in terms of results.
Do they mean in terms of raw scores?

Special consideration. Perfectly straightforward. Happens more often than you might think.

Good grief. We’ve kept the contingency day free but I’ve never known them to be used.

Apparently there was a problem in a school that ds’s friend goes to today with the invigilators ending the maths exam 12 minutes early. I have no idea how that could happen or how it can be put right (can it?). Poor kids

Where has this been suggested???

Not to my knowledge. But we're expected to prep for it in any case. Because if the roof fell in on exam day and we needed to do a whole cohort paper on contingency day, we'd have to do it.

Has it ever happened?

Contingency days are not for illnesses or clashes. And we've got the space and the invigilators booked because we have to have

Yeah and contingency days are for a fraction of the candidates who were ill, had subject clash, got caught in a flood on the way to the exam, or whatever. I dont see how they could rerun a whole exam again for the entire cohort on that day. Most of the invigilators needed would probably already have gone off on their holidays by then and big halls in use for the school play etc etc.

The whole point of the contingency days, though, is that they're meant to be kept free.

I think the post about possible use of the contingency day by ThatGreenNewt was based on the similarity of 2022's papers to this year's rather than the dodgy polygon question, which whilst not mathematically correct could still be answered correctly.
I don't think it will happen...iGCSE is set three times a year (June, Nov & Jan) in two time zones (papers 1H & 1HR etc) meaning there are 6 sets of papers in a year...there's bound to be some similarity to previous papers at some point.

Surely they'd just take a dodgy question out of the mark scheme if it was reviewed and found to be unfair or wrong, rather than make every year 11 kid retake an international GCSE, done in loads of UK schools but also done in every international school across THE WHOLE WORLD. I means thats 100s of 1000s of kids surely? They cant expect them all to be free on the 26th June.

I didn't see the paper but the maths teacher on Twitter who was not happy with the question said 'it's not at all obvious that the circle circumference is bounded above by the larger hexagon perimeter. Why didn't they use area?'

Here's a link to the dodgy polygon answers (in the comments)
Like I said, most kids would have been focused on finding X and would not have noticed that the polygon could not mathematically make sense
https://x.com/Ridermeister/status/1791489312233599238

AQA Further Maths Paper 1 was a shocker...really hard. DS only predicted a 7 in FM as not naturally fluent in normal maths (I just make him sit shed loads of past papers) but the grade 9 prediction kids were also traumatised by it.
The Student Room filled up with 'WTAF was that' type comments the minute it was over 😁

Just asked DS about the IGCSE maths paper and he isn't aware of any problem. He said he's done so many past papers and they all have similar questions year after year as that's the way it is. He didn't think the polygon question was dodgy and thought it was fine. It's all above my maths knowledge so who knows!
He thought the AQA further maths yesterday was hard and thinks he got around 49/80 which he's disappointed with. At least he'll have 4 days of practice for paper 2 next week. Anyone else sit this one and what did your DC think?