Edexcel maths A level today

[Maray1967]

Anyone else’s 18 year old had a bad time with Edexcel Maths today?

Mine says it was horrifically hard. I’ve said all the usual stuff about trying not to dwell on it and focusing on the next exam, but it might be helpful if he’s not alone!! He didn’t hang around long after school but says it looked like everyone thought it was hard.

They will speak to their students and take a view based on those conversations, which I have done.

Isn't the issue more that some questions were only accessible to students who were also studying FM? So an equally strong mathematician who has done FM will outperform the single maths student?

@NewlittlerescueThis is always the case. Last year mine did OCR maths and FM Alevels and majority who achieved A* in maths were the students that also did FM as some questions on maths needed the FM knowledge which others didn’t have.

Yes, it's possible that happens every year but only more noticeable this year as the exam was so hard overall! My DS's first words were 'It was a good one for me, but I really felt sorry for anyone who hadn't done Further Maths!'

I thought there would be a thread on this. My dd is a very able mathematician and said it was the hardest paper she’s seen in terms of how the questions were structured. She’s quietly optimistic.

But what’s the point in making kids sob in exams like the pp mentioned. Exams should allow students to showcase their knowledge.

Really interesting to read the updates and I agree with those who have said that the issue is not that the paper was difficult but the gate-keeping of marks ie that so many of the questions were inaccessible if you didn’t get the first bit of the question. It is such a depressing experience to sit in an exam thinking, ‘well I don’t even know how to have a go at these questions so I’m certain to drop xx number of marks, what’s the point?’ - it does disadvantage all but the very top students.

Prove (by contradiction) that it can't be the case that both A and B are odd numbers....

A proof should be something memorised for the exam.

Back when I rode a dinosaur to school my maths teacher would tell us to 'Pray for a hard paper' (RC Girls' school if relevant, she also told us to use our feminine intuition).

Most people look at a hard paper and panic for 5-10 mins, that is mins you don't waste if you are expecting it.

Every mark and half mark counts so attempt everything you can, even if it is just to put the first line down or in this case, state the theorem.

Let A and B be integers. If A + B is an odd number, then A and B cannot both be odd.

Once that is down is there anything else you can do? Yes - do it or No- move on to another question but come back to this later.

I know for the young people who took this yesterday it feels like the end of the world, it isn't, it is a hard paper, no more no less. I assume there is a paper 2 so time to make up the grade.

It happens sometimes, on my mock physics paper there was a question about a kettle with a heating element, it could be taken as a kettle on a hob or an electric kettle.

The cohort who did this were marked as if it was the way they had drawn the diagram regardless of which way they did it.

DC found it incredibly hard too - said it was the only paper he has done (has done all the past papers) that he has run out of time and not been able to go back and check everything. DC is doing FM too but they sit the A-level in Y12 and FM in Y13 so haven't yet covered the FM syllabus that others mention finding useful for the A-level.

Still 2 papers to go though and if it's graded on a curve the results may not be as bad as they are worrying about.

If edexcel were going to make the questions hard they could have at least made parts of the question accessible. For a majority of the questions, if you couldn’t work out part a, parts b,c etc were out of reach. This paper was awful.

I've just read the above, gain words from my maths teacher.

If you think you have screwed up part 'a' then you write the magic words, "Assuming the answer to part 'a' was..."

This forces the marker to use that answer you have given in part 'a'.

I think I remember doing proper algebraic proofs for the first time in Y1 of Uni, so I agree a hard question for A-level but I don't agree it's the case that proofs have to be memorised - it should be possible to logically get there. Sometimes not particularly elegantly. And difficult in exam conditions. But rote learning isn't what (I thought) A-level maths is about.

No - there weren’t any questions only accessible to students studying further maths. The content was all single maths specification.

Algebraic proofs and proof by contradiction are on the current A-level maths specification. These come up every year.

God almighty, the comments on that petition about having been “traumatised”.
Exam boards look to ensure consistency from year to year in the proportion of students getting each grade. If last year 20% of students got an A, they will set the grade boundaries so that this year roughly the same applies. If it’s a harder paper, the mark needed to get an A will be lower, to keep the proportions at each grade consistent year to year. It’s not the case that a harder paper means dramatically fewer will pass.

IKR? A petition 😆🤓😆

tis not faaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiir wah wah wah

My precious darling didn't get what he deseeeeeeeeeerves.

OMG the sheer entitledness.

They’re not doing themselves any favours are they? 🤣

That's good to know. In that case this will all come out in the wash (grade boundaries).

The wailing comments under the petition are something else but I did love this one, which is a bit more normal.

Hey guys its AM back for round 2, Paper was lightwork, skill issue if u couldn't do it. W Edexcel for such a beautiful paper (im a further maths student btw). You all need to stop begging it, just admit your washed at maths. finished the paper with 30min to spare, decided to start burping mid exam to distract the rest of my cohort from focusing on the paper. Get good at maths. Keep crying. reading all these comments of people crying and being traumatised from this paper brings a small chuckle to myself.

Way to go AM 👏👏

On a side note.People get traumatised by a maths paper now? All that talk about mental health in schools might have gone a bit too far. Anything difficult or where a child doesn't get their own way and ends up frustrated now is alledlegly trauma and they need mental health support.

I think that is really unfair.

DS sat the paper yesterday and as FM student with a relatively low pressure offer he was philosophical about it. But many of his friends studying Maths only are incredibly upset and worried.

A couple specifically have worked their absolutely arses off for years to secure incredibly competitive med and vet med offers, and are now genuinely worried that a single paper could be the undoing of a future they have worked so hard for. I know them and they couldn't be further from "entitled" if they tried.

Hopefully their fears are needless because the grade boundaries will reflect the difficulty of the paper, but for young people in the middle of this high stakes process at a time when the economic future they face is bleak to say the least, I think it is in really poor taste to mock their distress.

Just to add - there aren't ever question in A-Level where you have to do further maths to be able to answer. However there are questions where you can answer them in several different ways, and some of those ways may involve skills from further maths - e.g. in last year's paper there was a differential equation question which could be solve using normal A-Level techniques, or by using an integration factor (from FM).

I think you need to read the comments actually on the petition first - the measured ones with the gist of your post are VERY few and far between. Whoever is commenting on the petition isn’t helping the case at all. I went there hoping - expecting - to read sensible comments, and was shocked!

@TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross wrote **I think it means that, since exam papers have to remain out of circulation for 24 hours after the paper is sat, how would teachers and tutors have had access to the paper to be able to comment on its level of difficulty? They shouldn’t be able to set eyes on it until this afternoon 🤔

Ah, I hadn’t thought of that. However, I can think of reasons why a Maths teacher may legitimately have seen the paper. For example, if they had no students sitting the paper they may have acted as invigilators. Also, and this would apply to far fewer people, they may have been asked to scribe for a student or look at a dyspraxic student’s script and check for legibility. I suppose it could be argued in that case they didn’t need to see the questions.

If you have the calculator that you must have for further maths, certain calculations can be done on it that those with the more standard maths a level calculators would not have been able to do. I think they need to forbid these advanced calculators if they advantage FM students.

It means no teaching staff can see the paper until 24hrs after the official finish time.

For us that is 3pm.

Invigilators are forbidden from looking at exam papers. JCQ rules.

I'm an EO.

Helpful, thank you @Gardeningsideeffects .
I have never invigilated, so I didn’t know.