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.

Honestly I’m not sure as at the time, the lead invigilator contacted the exams officer to deal with it. I should know but have forgotten what happened!

Ds2 did it- for reference he is doing Further Maths as well and is predicted A star in both.

He said it was 'hard but doable', but noted that only his friends who are also doing Further Maths said the same. He felt that anyone who was 'just' doing Maths would probably have found it more difficult.

He did struggle with the question that @badger2005 mentioned!

Ha ha... as the maths students may know, if you create a certain sort of exam, you might not end up with a bell curve, but a different kind of curve instead. Imagine an exam where you needed to be pretty good at maths to solve a puzzle to 'unlock' half the questions. You'd get a bulge of students who couldn't unlock it, and then a second bulge of students who could unlock it. Not a nice bell curve, but two peaks!

@HarshbutTrue2 do you have a child who sat this exam? Are you a maths teacher?

So if a student point out a suspected error we try and understand the issue and let the EO know. So yes we do look at the paper then but only that issue. They will then call the board and see if it’s a known issue. The more people that raise it the more we know it’s a problem. We make a note of the pupils concerns. If there is an error the exam board will have to make adjustments. However some people see errors where there aren’t any. Or some people, see them, make a note and move on knowing others will pick it up.
We aren’t meant to browse and peruse the papers and I guess be able to tell others what’s on it.

But I believe at no point should a teacher be consulted if there is an error.

I just had a look at the paper and while it's not easy, it's certainly recognisably an A-level maths paper.

Students should be told that if they are given part a) is 'show that something = ksinx' where they need to work out k (random example, not on the paper) and then part b) is 'hence work out blah', and they can't do part a) they should make up a k and use that to do part b) as they should get some method marks.

I was a teacher and examiner in a different subject.

Our grade boundaries were always calculated using a bell curve. Thus, the grade boundaries fluctuated a little every year. I always explained to students how the grade boundaries were set.

When I was an examiner, the grade boundaries were set before all the papers were marked. Possibly after 75% were marked. Trends could be identified by then. An examiners report is written identifying the good and bad parts of the examination.

On the whole, my students got the grade which they deserved. Students who had worked consistently well tended to do consistently well.
The kids who can do difficult questions deserve to do better than those who can't. That's life.

My students didn't regularly collapse in tears. They didn't abuse the examiners. They didn't have diarrhoea.
I did have a few who shed tears of happiness on results day.

This thread reminds me of a hue and cry about a SATs reading paper a few years ago. That involved hysterical kids and parents too. When the results came out they were normal results.

For the record. The last exam that I failed was my driving test, aged 17. I was devastated; for about an afternoon. I didn't collapse into tears. I didn't have a nervous breakdown. I simply rebooked my test and passed it next time. I thought one of my A levels was difficult - I got an A. Teenagers need to build resilience in order to face the real world.

In all honesty, a lot of these kids shouldn't be going to university. They lack the tenacity and resilience required. It will be a waste of time and money.

@HarshbutTrue2 best reply yet. Completely agree with you. It’s so important to put that experience behind you (or to one side) and focus on the next. The timing of the petition was crazy! Perhaps not surprising in these fast-moving times of instant gratification.

There’s always a petition after a difficult exam demanding lower grade boundaries these days. I guess signing it gives pupils a chance to blow off steam and rage against the machine. I suspect some of those typing angrily were much more sanguine in real life. Typing “this paper was a literal war crime, my life is ruined” doesn’t mean that the kid actually believes that.

These exams are also extremely high stakes for some pupils who need top grades to meet their offers so stress levels are running understandably high and this has been always true, not just a ‘snowflake generation’ thing.

In the past, teens would have moaned to their friends and moved on.
These days with social media they can whip themselves up into a frenzy.

Ah thanks for your reply, I’m just out of touch! My children are 29, 28 and 25. Good to know for my nephew though. I clicked on the petition expecting to see earnest and measured comments but I understand the thinking now about “blowing off steam”. I’m a bit too much of a deep-thinker for these times - we would draft a letter before writing it in proper ink on Basildon Bond 🤣

There are two things here. I agree that yes you should be able to use logic to get to the answer.

But when you know you are about to sit an exam then a bit of rote learning does help.

You will be given a formula sheet for the exam but an A Level student should know them.

Yes, I agree that social media whips up teen anxiety. But why are mothers being so silly? It is a mums job to keep calm and carry on, not get into a frenzy. Did these frantic mums take A levels themselves?

How many marks was the difficult question worth? It is possible to drop a few marks and still gain an A grade.

Universities are short of students this year. Some are in danger of closing down. Why are parents unaware of this?
Universities are not going to turn business away. They want students it is fairly common for Universities to accept someone with AAB instead of AAA.
It is not the end of the world if students have to go to their second choice. The universe wont collapse if they have to enter clearing. Kids may find themselves at a more suitable university.

@HarshbutTrue2 You seem very focused on mothers (no mention of fathers' role in all this), what they should be doing, and their perceived hysteria when in fact there have been plenty of very measured comments from mothers not to mention the many thousands who haven't weighed in on it. It's ironic for someone condemning people (or rather, women) 'getting into a frenzy' that your posts are full of silly, overblown stereotypes about the youth of today/snowflakes, references to trenches etc.

FWIW, I was a straight A student back in the day and I think teens now have it much harder than we did decades go, with so much more pressure. There is far greater competition for places at top universities and they have to work harder for top grades. (I, for one, don't remember doing multiple practice papers for anything or knowing what had come up in previous years but that seems to be absolutely standard for top students now.) There has been enough reaction to this paper to suggest that it was misjudged and I'm sure it has been helpful to students who were thrown by how much harder it was than those from the past few years. Yes, lots of the comments on the petition were daft - many were very clearly tongue in cheek as well - that's ok, EdExcel are free to ignore them just as the people who made them are free to make them. Also, having blown off steam, they will i'm sure just get on and do their next exam just as you so laudably did after your driving test.

Exam regulator monitoring marking of A-level maths exam that left students 'overwhelmed' - BBC News

I think - just as a frenzy-free observation! - it's worth recognizing that even when grade boundaries can be adjusted, it's still the case that an exam paper might be poorly designed to differentiate students.
This is an analogy - I do not think this is what has happened: imagine an exam paper with half the questions really easy, and half the questions incredibly hard. That might not be very good at differentiating the A students from the B students and the C students, say. Of course, we can move the grade boundary - but you'd end up with a group of students all of whom could do the easy questions, none of whom could do the hard questions, and with A's, B's and C's distributed amongst them just based on whether e.g. they made one tiny error in the easy questions, or whether they took a random successful guess at a hard question and got a mark for that. That sort of thing isn't what the examiners are trying to measure.
Now obviously that's not what happened - but I just want to clarify that the mere fact that grade boundaries can be moved doesn't mean that it isn't important to get the exam design right! It needs to be good at measuring what it's supposed to be measuring.
Also - I'm all for young people building up resilience. But that obviously doesn't mean that everything that happens to them is good for them, and that therefore this exam paper was fine!

Yeah I also think it's far too simplistic just to say "They'll move the grade boundaries" - what they really mean is that they'll move them closer together downwards, meaning there are fewer marks between grades which may mean a silly mistake may cost a student dearly whereas for wider grade boundaries it is more tolerant to a single mistake (which nearly always happens for every student in maths!). Also there needs to be a decent amount of more basic questions to allow those E grade students to get something down of worth to give them their chance at an E. If they're all too hard some students may struggle to show any learning at all. DS said it was definitely significantly harder than previous paper 1s and that he was concerned for his friends who didn't do FM who would be penalised. An excellent Maths A-level grade should not rely on also doing FM, or having a graphical calculator!

Yes my DS who is sitting his maths/FM a levels now, has the same calculator as maths students. It is not a fancy graphical calculator.

To add to @TeenToTwenties post, there’s just been a section about this on BBC News at One.

Also there needs to be a decent amount of more basic questions to allow those E grade students to get something down of worth to give them their chance at an E

The first four questions were very basic! I think, calculus aside, my Y11s could have given them a good shot.

There was plenty on there that a reasonably well prepared candidate would have seen before and have the methods to solve or at least have a go at.

Ok, so finally got my hands on the question paper and managed to find an hour to have a quick go at it.

I would say it is a little harder than most years, but not horrendous. The proof by contradiction was harder than normal, and many maths teachers hate teaching the A level proof.... It is usually v easy or v hard and no in-between. The penultimate question was really nice to do.... the exam constructors are really clever!
My Y13 didn't think it was too bad.... none take FM, but they are mostly A/B students. They could not do the proof, although the question gave a lot of starting help.
In conclusion, I think that the grade boundaries may be a little lower, but in terms of a paper review.... they are living in cloud cuckoo land.

I am not trying to belittle how students found the paper, but having taught A-level maths for almost 30 years, I know a thing or 2 about it.

anyone who has spent about an hour with a teenager will know that its obviously not meant to be taken seriously

Almost 23,000 people have signed the petition🤦‍♂️.

I really do not see what the problem is. Q9 was quite hard, but trig identities often are.

Again, I can see little wrong with the paper..... in fact I quite like it. Mostly accessible, with some challenge.

I haven't seen the paper, nor have I done any maths for many years but all I can tell you is that my own teen (consistently predicted A*) and school friends of similar profile all found it much tougher than anything they'd done in practice papers and that there were questions they had no idea how to do. Same story from the DC of two friends at two different schools who sat the same paper - none of them drama llamas. None are signing petitions to my knowledge but they were all pretty dispirited by the paper having worked hard and, they thought, prepared well. Saying that, mine has totally moved on now and not mentioned it for a day or so.