How difficult is GCSE maths and English?

[hajajajajzuzusjjsjw]

I mean I'm 26 years past doing mine, but just wanted to know if the exams are harder these days. I was thinking that with the modern advances and availability with internet surely that makes a massive difference to a lot of students ?

Maths is definitely harder.

My English Lit was lots of coursework so a different experience entirely. I seem to remember it being 100% coursework but surely that can't have been the case!

You can actually search for past papers on line. My DC did GCSE’s last year so we searched and found Foundation Level Maths was actually no more difficult than 11+ Maths Prep books. However, some of the questions in Higher Level Maths required exceptional Maths skills far beyond my O’ Level capability.

Am I misremembering or was there an intermediate paper in the past?

I’ve just had a look at a couple of papers and the foundation one looks more like things I learnt at primary school, but the higher paper is more difficult than I remember my higher tier paper being. What do all the kids in the middle do?

You're right, there was. There's no middle now.

There was, I sat intermediate level maths GCSE and obtained a B grade, this was 2002.

I think they're harder because there's more now too. I'm not sure the content is that much more difficult, but the sheer volume of it. There's more actual test papers they sit (2x English lit, 2x English lang and 3x for maths) and no coursework so very difficult to show knowledge when exams aren't your thing. One of the many English exams they sit is over 2hrs long. I didn't have an exam that long till A Levels.

Higher maths is hard if you’re aiming for a high grade. There’s a lot in the content and I think it includes things that didn’t used to be looked at until A level.