Pronouns in maths exams

Nah.

This Never Happens. Multiple people check those questions, you know.

Yay. My year 11 has two more science exams to go and now doesn't know whether he can trust the advanced info or not. It was supposed to help but hasn't.

AQA having a truly stunning exam season schoolsweek.co.uk/aqa-sorry-for-stress-over-a-level-law-questions-not-in-advance-info/ Another fuck-up, another apology.

How in the name of the wee man could an error as big as that get through! That is horrifying.

Shocking

I think the worst mistake so far this year is that WJEC forgot to include the Shakespeare questions on the A-level lit paper so kids thought they had been taught the wrong texts and then had to wait ages for the extra questions to be printed and distributed.

I think more mistakes are being spotted than there used to be due to social media. When I did exams back in the olden days, you'd come out and chat about it with your friends, and maybe complain at your teacher, but that would be about as far as it went.
Now everybody tags AQA on Twitter.
This is not a bad thing as it holds them more accountable.
The exam boards get lots and lots of money. You'd think the least they could do is get stuff right - the wrong countries in a Geography exam is a pretty big mistake, isn't it.

Purgatory I think someone needs to write to the Times to point out that would never happen, as the papers are carefully checked.

I wonder what the Maths examiners would make of an English exam that contained incorrect maths.

It makes you wonder how many errors the boards make that don't get reported on, because in those cases, it is possible for exam board staff to mean-spiritedly argue the toss about whether the questions were unclear for candidates.

By and large, we only hear about open-and-shut case like confusing the Montagues and the Capulets in Romeo and Juliet and mislabeling flipping countries, as no-one's found a way to say that objecting to such a thing is transphobic or somehow the fault of poor teaching. Give it time though.

extract
[...] the map wrongly labelled Gabon as the Republic of the Congo as part of an extended question about countries on the continent that produce oil.

A secondary school geography teacher feared the mistake by the Pearson Edexcel exam board, in the last of three papers sat on Tuesday, could damage pupils’ results.

He told MailOnline: “Thousands of kids across England and Wales sat that. There have been a lot of complaints to the exam board. They have been inundated. It’s an atrocious mistake from an exam body setting GCSE papers. They have been rubbish in all three papers this year, but this is by far the worst mistake. [bold mine]

Another carefully checked exam, GCSE Edexcel Geography labelling the wrong countries on a map.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/map-of-african-countries-labelled-incorrectly-on-gcse-geography-exam-paper-cp3nwcw9v

Many thanks @DorotheaDiamond
I always let teachers know, but I had not thought of exams officers.

slightly off topic - if you have a child with visual difficulties such as colour blindness make sure the school and exams officer know. Invigilators are allowed to name colours in these cases - so if the question is “which is the country shown in yellow” we would be allowed to point at it.

ideally they should be in stripes/spots or whatever though not colours. If a question is absolutely dependent on colour vision the exam board should make adjustments…but you have to make sure these issues are raised before exams!

Prediction. As a result of AQA's new commitment to 'diversity' (but not the disability kind), the board will release new, updated editions of all the textbooks across AQA subjects!

Schools will be told they will have to buy these in order to adequately prepare for the new question formats!

This is the problem with being guided by diversity experts who are unable to see the bigger picture or any world outside their own little bubble.

Sounds like it was a deliberate decision by AQA to move to gender-neutral language in their assessments, after consultation with various groups - notably, a great many different diversity and inclusion groups, rather than a great many groups representing students with various disabilities.

They do say they consulted teachers and examiners etc ,but my bet is that is was all about how to increase diversity, rather than on any problems it would cause.

And just to be clear, I don't have any problems with the principle of including diverse content etc. Even gender neutral language can be managed successfully, if it's done carefully and well. But it's the fact that the need to be seen to be neutral and inclusive overrides genuine concerns about accessibility that bothers me.

www.aqa.org.uk/news/equality,-diversity-and-inclusion-in-our-qualifications-weve-listened-and-acted

No English and maths GCSE, no university student loan, plans say

I'd forgotten about that AuxArmesCitoyens.

And the government is planning to ban student loans for students who fail English and Maths GCSE, don't forget.

Suggestions thinks that everybody, doesnt matter who, has to bow down at the TRA altar, even if it means failing exams and reducing potential career prospects. Because nothing else matters.

I work at a university. Exam questions and the answers (STEM subject) are triple checked, but the course leader still has to be on hand during their exam in case of a query. You would have to be alarmingly simple to assume that papers are always perfect.

Not quite as bad perhaps as WJEC board leaving out 4 pages from the A level English lit paper.

Interesting DD1 complained an entire topic they said definitely wouldn't be examined this year turned up in the WJEC AS maths paper she sat. Staff were looking into it and it was all over twitter apparently.

20 + years ago I remember picking up my History GCSE course work for one of the English exam board and being assured by the head of department they'd made an official complaint about one question that was on a topic not covered by the course content - I was bemused as it was a source work question so historical context was almost incidental and topic very quickly touched on by my teacher. Apparently stronger student like me had just got on with it and treated it as source work skills test but the rest had been very upset by it.

Ideally exam board wouldn't make mistakes but there are usually some every year - though there are a lot of exams each year. Here it wasn't a mistake but poorly chosen wording and it's easy to see how that could slip through - hopefully people complaining will alert board to problems for future exams at very least.

If there are ever awards for "most well-suited" and "most ironic" Mumsnet usernames, I think I may have a nominee for one of them.

Quite right too. If they're up to doing GCSE Geography and recognising oxbow lakes, then they can differentiate colours. It's a lower cognitive demand!

well I've never had any colour blind students that couldn't see those colours, so it's clearly not a problem.

and if I do get any colour blind students, I'll train them in advance that colours might be used, and therefore they'll be prepared, unlike poor schools that don't think of this.

and of course they should be able to see the colours in the map, because seeing colours and identifying them is on the Early Years curriculum, and much much easier than the level of knowledge needed to answer the geography question. so it's not a problem.

and if they still can't do that, then they should go back to pre-reception level geography work, becaues this is not a suitable course for them, and I will advise them to try something that suits better. I've been advising students for ages and they're all very happy with these suggestions and with me.

3. they should take other subjects, and other A-levels, and then a degree, and then finally do a post-graduate module that covers the same content as GCSE Geography, at the cost of however many thousand pounds for the course.