Y11 2023-24 thread 4

Oh god was hexagon the wrong answer or not? I cant remember what he said he put. Surely a regular polygon with greater than 5 sides cant have an interior angle of 180?

Also re-reading your post @AIstolemylunch, your son was on it! Bodes well 😉

Yes Edexcel iGCSE Paper 1H Specification A
Q24 (usually a grade 9 decider) was a worded polygon question with n sides where n >5
The internal angles of the polygon follow an arithmetic sequence
The smallest angle is 84°
The common difference is 4°
Work out the sum of the interior angles and show clear algebraic workings

So technically the polygon had to have had an interior angle of 180° (!)
DS who sat the paper would not have blinked an eye at that 'insinuation' - would not have even noticed
DD would have been disgusted and outraged

The bods that picked it up are the lovely community of maths teachers on Twitter who enjoy looking over the content and checking all is fair. They are often involved in setting questions themselves in various other maths arenas or are marker in the UKMT etc

What was the dodgy polygon question?

DS did Edexcel International GCSE in Maths (Specification A)

Is that the one affected?

We havent heard anything from his school. He did mention a something about confusion amongst his friends between a hexagon and something else?

If they do anything regarding paper similarity then that would be ludicrous - I have personally downloaded and scanned every paper available from the edexcel site and they are all similar! That's the whole point! And lik eall kids that do past papers, they tend to do all of them so they wouldn't remember what was on which paper. And as long as it teaches them the methods and they can reproduce it, job done. What a non-issue.

@DominoRules Would you mind helping me/DD little about the Chem Engg degree and jobs, please. I don’t know what to look for and DD had someone came into her school, and she was interested. But then found few videos that guys are all working in Asia/USA ( I think it was GE) and then she decided there is not enough “good” jobs in UK 😔
She is definitely doing Phy and M+ FM, but still can’t decide between Chemistry/Economics. It would be really good if she can read /find out a bit more about Chem side.
We are at a loss, so any help towards this would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Just caught up on the rest of the thread, I hope they confirm quickly what's happening with the IGCSE. It's so unfair on the pupils having this hanging over them. Whilst I understand the concerns, this is not the fault of the students and they should not feel as though they are being punished.

The a level result stress is a whole new thing. So much riding on them.

Today we have tried to revise physics but I think she's reached her limit. She's worked so hard but she just wants it to be over now.

I get that it's not on to have errors in papers BUT I'd rather they hadn't kicked up a massive fuss about it whilst there are still two contingency days in play. The thought of these kids having to retake a maths paper at this stage makes me want to weep. I just don't think it will happen

1. Dodgy Polygon in IGCSE Paper 1H 2024
2. The uncanny likeness of IGCSE 2024 and 2022 papers.
3. The final question on GCSE Paper 3, where pupils were instructed to use perimeter to find a lower and upper bound for pi.

all Pearson. The amazing maths teacher I follow is Tom Bowler whose handle is @Ridermeister. I'm not good enough at maths to understand the intricacies of it but he's posted the questions on his feed

(also I CANNOT spell 'practice' to save my life. Have a real issue with it!)

What were the three issues @Paperclipp?

I really hope you are right @Bellini12!

I asked DS whether he's heard anything about the IGCSE maths issue. The answer is no, and he just shrugged and said there was no point in worrying about it until we know more about what's going to happen. And carried on his geography revision. I'm glad his reaction is more mature than mine! 😆

I can’t see the maths igcse being a problem. Isn’t that the way with maths ? Questions can be similar but just with different values? My DC probably sat the 2022 paper (along with many others) and has no inkling that they were indeed similar. We’ve had no word from the school.
It’s not like eg English Lit where it would be obvious if the exact big marker questions were rehashed?
The paper wasn’t leaked either.
All sounds a bit bizarre.

DC only has two papers left now, Physics 2 Friday, music listening on Monday. It's their birthday today, have done a bit of revision, we're going out for dinner together tonight (and I took them for a bonus patisserie at teatime). So glad this is nearly over.

We are also going away, I hadn’t actually twigged about the contingency day until after we had booked… luckily we dont do igcse…

good news about the PIP steppemum

Oh I am so sorry for those waiting to hear about contingency and maths.

we are going on holiday, in the rash assumption that the contingency day is never used.

On a really happy note, we just heard that dd has been awarded PIP.
Will make such a difference to her next year.

I've been wondering whether the iGCSE maths thing would blow up..DD (Y9) is a maths whizz so I follow lots of mathematicians on Twitter and they have picked up on three issues in this year's various (i)GCSE maths papers. They've all been reporting them trying to hold the examination boards to account.
Personally, I really can't see an issue with 2024 being similar to 2022...DS has sat 46 iGCSE Edexcel past papers + the 6 practise papers for maths since Christmas and the questions just get repeated over and over again with minor tweaks. He'd never say 'ooo Mum, the paper I sat was very similar to the one I did the third week in April. He just would not remember that paper, even if he'd sat it a week beforehand. It would only really be an issue for the kids that happened to practise the 2022 1H & 2H in the immediate days beforehand & hadn't done loads of other past papers. I'd be shocked if Pearson acted on it.

How awful for the poor kids concerned can't believe it was not picked up. Hope they respond quickly and the outcome is no resit.

There are about 1300 pupils. Maths is the only set they split restare all mixed ability. Other local school all classes are in sets. DD is a 9 student in Maths getting bored of teacher keep repeating for kids who are struggling to understand also she has started to second guess herself now. Will see what happens in September when she starts GCSE work.

As an example here is one of the questions, most of the exam is like this, same style of question just slightly different numbers (one of them has the answer drawn on which is why they look different)

I’ve just looked online and paper 2 is very similar, I’m surprised this wasn’t picked up before.

Not actually sure if we did iGcse or not. Lord.

Exactly. What a ridiculous situation to put kids in. How hard is it yo check the last 2 or 3 years papers? Especially as 2022 woukd have been used as a mock or practice paper?

That's unbelievable - how can the exam board not check if a paper is too similar to a previous edition as part of their review before signing off on it? Or am I missing something?

Sorry for any kid/mum who has to go through this again!

True @ThatGreenNewt. Just not sure I can face the prospect of more exams! 😭