To not believe my friend about DDs GCSE's...

[adhominemhaterr]

My friends daughter sat her first two maths GCSE papers (one last month and one yesterday).
After the first exam, she texted me asking about my daughters maths exam, she's claiming her DD was given an AQA paper when the school they're at only offers edexcel.
She also says her DD was given lots of questions based on topics she hadn't studied for.
Is there any way her DD could've been given an AQA paper by mistake? Surely this would have been noticed?
My DD definitely did an Edexcel paper, not AQA....

I can't help but think she is lying about this. Why would the school order one AQA paper by mistake when the exam boards are completely separate!?
She is now writing a complaint!

Why would she lie about it?

If it is true they why on Earth didn't her DD put her hand up and say something at the time?

Mistakes certainly can happen.

Why would she lie about it?

I think that when I was at school certain sets did Edexcel and other sets did AQA depending on whether you were doing foundation etc. If they did exams on different days then that would suggest different exam boards. I’d be really surprised if this was a mistake though.

What has she said about how her DD dealt with it at the time? I'd presume she told the teachers who were invigilating?

Sometimes people start up a web of lies if they are expecting or going to be giving out bad news. so if she thinks her daughter has screwed up and might fail, then she might be preparing the ground for this. we had a couple of parents doing something similar in relation to the 11+. your friend needs to go into school now, right away and find out what is going on or has gone on. leaving it until the results gives you a lot less opportunity to do anything about it.

it would be incredibly unusual for a school not to notice the name on the exam paper.

Also, they should know who is foundation and who isn't. the only way to deal with this is to speak to the school asap. If your friend wont do this or sort of fudges it a bit, then I am afraid its down to my first comment

The maths topics studied are the the same for all the exam boards, the syllabus was set by the DfE.

It’s not unusual for students to be faced with topics they’ve not studied on maths papers but that’s because only the top sets will be taught everything, and nothing to do with who set the exam.

Was she given a higher instead of foundation paper?

All the Boards do exams on the same day I believe, yesterday was the second paper. Surely she should be on to the school about it, find out if what the girl says is right before firing off complaints then being made to look a fool.
She can't have done a mixture of Boards because each Board has its own attendance sheet, even if the school uses different Boards for different sets.

Is she saying it was just her DD given the wrong paper and everyone else in the Hall has the right paper? Or that everyone taking maths got the wrong paper?

Sounds like a load of rubbish to me as if she is possibly guessing the daughter did badly and is making excuses already. There are many codes and checks that are done to ensure the students are entered for the correct exams so this couldn't just be an error by the school and the school wouldn't just wrongly receive the wrong exam board papers (and not notice). The papers come in weeks before the exam and so are checked early. Also all exam boards teach the same content and so there wouldn't be topics on it that they wouldn't be taught. Ultimately it is actually seen to be the students responsibility not that the staff if they have sat the wrong paper as they are supposed to check their own exam timetable and see if any mistakes have been made and to check they have the right paper when they sit the papers and so alert anyone of any errors- this does seem unfair as 15/16 is young but that's the way it is

@sleepxxx
She often lies about her DD when it comes to school issues.
Her DD is also a compulsive liar, she constantly lies to my DD about what she's doing at school.
She never attends any of her lessons and fails to complete her work on time.

Teachers don't invigilate exams it's a different set of people (I am one) who wouldn't necessarily know which maths set students were in. They have lists and are supposed to check by asking 'has everyone got the right paper'. I think it is very unlikely she would sit through a whole exam without telling anyone it was the wrong one but who knows.

I suppose it could have happened. If they got in an invigilator they might have thought she'd been left off but then the chief invigilator should have checked. Or possibly the daughter has told her DM this to cover for not doing any revision, has then bricked it when she saw the paper and decided to lie about it.

@preggersteach
I totally agree.
I think it's more likely for her DD to be lying, I think her DD came home and got herself in a panic because she didn't do very well so decided to tell her Mum the school made a mistake...

It sounds far fetched to me. How would nobody notice at the time of the exam? Could she think that her DD has done badly so has come up with a story which would explain doing the paper again (resitting!) at a later date? My nephew did maths yesterday and said it was tough.

My DD says that in every exam, they ask all the students to check it's the right paper, as a just-in-case measure. They also read out the exam board and paper reference.

I imagine most schools would employ something similar.

Not possible. The new linear exams for English and Maths aren’t tiered. So all will do they same exam. There is no way a random AQA paper slipped into an Edexcel pack- they are totally different exam boards and wouldn’t send papers to schools not signed up to sit the paper.

I smell bullshit.

From my experience (12 years teaching), students are asked prior to the exam to check the paper details and to let invigilators know (who are never teachers - in fact, these days teachers aren't allowed in the exam room until the exam is over or see the paper until the next day) if there are any problems.

Although departments are able to use different exam boards for the same subject (for example foundation paper students might sit a different board to the higher paper students) I have never come across one student being given a different board's paper to the rest of the cohort.

Has your friend contacted the exams officer in their DD's school? I would strongly recommend she speak to them before complaining.

MissSusanSays, maths papers are still tiered although you're right that English aren't.

As a teacher I would say it sounds extremely unlikely. The exams officers in schools are usually pretty thorough. However very weird that your friend would lie about it. Maybe it was a misunderstanding on the part of her daughter? If it's true she could certainly appeal.

She's talking rubbish (I'm a teacher)

Certainly in some schools different sets do different exam boards.

If she doesn’t attend lessons then that’s why there were topics she hadn’t been taught!

There’s no way at all that the school would accidentally have gone onto the AQA website, accidentally signed up for and paid for 1 maths entry, then received the lone paper in a delivery of its own and then handed it on its own to the invigilators who then put it out in the exam hall without anyone noticing.

Unless the school were doing both exam boards it seems highly unlikely. I would guess she suspects she has done badly and is making excuses. If the mum genuinely believes this story then they need to speak to the school ASAP.