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.

Thank you, @noblegiraffe .

The first half of the paper was pretty basic…. Many of the later questions were too. I would say 2 harder questions only.

That is not the point. I just think it is interesting that AI analysis suggests the paper was not unfair and much of the outcry is from a relatively small number of students and their parents may suggest entitlement.

AI got that analysis from real people - you could have too!

I think you hit on an important point.
My child had a bad day = evidence that the exam was unfair.

AI looks at the whole online picture, including historical data and that is somehow not valid?

sure it can make mistakes, but its findings are still interesting.

I agree with this. 40 plus years of teaching A level maths.

I think it's because people come to a discussion forum to talk to real people? If people wanted a bot answer they could have asked chatgpt themselves.

The issue isn't about students having a bad day or whether the paper was hard.

The concern seems to be that the paper didn't follow the structure and difficulty of the 2023-2025 papers which the board seems to have suggested it would from a previous report.

For AI to comment it needs all the papers and the boards report.

This blog post is extremely interesting as it goes in depth into the criticisms and rational behind some of the questions https://themarkscheme.co.uk/edexchell-2026paper1/

It also criticises the approach that some students appear to have taken of revising via multiple past papers rather than actually engaging with the topics and improving their understanding. This would have been far less of a problem in earlier years as far fewer past papers were available.

If strong candidates have been only using Edexcel past papers for revision and not, for example, used the excellent but far more challenging and sometimes completely off-the-wall Madas papers, then the real problem is that they weren't as well prepared for an A-level maths exam as they thought they were. They were only prepared for a carbon-copy Edexcel paper.

Incidentally, MADAS passed away fairly recently. His family left the website up as a legacy for him. Complete respect.

As someone who has not done maths for many years and has not seen the paper, I have no insight into how "easy" it might have been.

But Edexcel themselves published a report after the summer 2024 exams, patting themselves on the back for making exams accessible by (among other things) reducing the reliance of later question parts on the results from earlier ones. It seems they did follow their own guidance for 2025. And yet this year they rolled back on this, with no prior warning or communication to schools.

Perhaps schools should have foreseen this and been more rigorous in teaching exam techniques, and maybe students should also have sought more challenging material than the Edexcel past papers, if that's all they were using (my son did use resources from Madas, for what it's worth). But I don't see the "entitlement". Students have been doing what they thought they needed to do, to prepare for these exams.

As the parent of a teen who somewhat bombed this paper and now needs to pick himself up and prepare for paper 2 on Thursday, I'd be pleased to hear from any Maths teachers as to how you would advise your own students in this situation.

It seems they did follow their own guidance for 2025.

There was actually a massive balls-up in 2025 where the paper was leaked so they replaced it with a back-up paper but didn’t replace both pure papers. The papers weren’t a pair and there were repeated topics over the two papers and missing topics instead of full coverage. Then there was a massive outcry about how students had been penalised unfairly, the paper was too different to what went previously, demand for lower grade boundaries etc etc. Yet in the end it was 86% for an A* so actually the papers were really easy. The perception on social media didn’t match the outcome. https://schoolsweek.co.uk/ofqual-scrutinising-edexcels-a-level-maths-replacement-paper/

It’s quite ironic that now that controversial sitting is being held up as what students wanted and the new paper is unfair and not the same as previous papers!

I would tell your son that if it was a hard paper then the grade boundaries will be lower and these things tend to cause massive fuss on the day but no fuss on results day because actually it all sorts itself out and kids generally are fine with the outcome.

It’s quite ironic that now that controversial sitting is being held up as what students wanted and the new paper is unfair and not the same as previous papers!

Maybe the balls-up of 2025 was not on the radar of so many parents of the 2026 cohort? It had certainly passed me by. My point was that the practices outlined in the report issued in 2025 were presumably reflected in the 2025 paper and then dropped with no warning. I doubt anyone is advocating for the actual balls-up to be repeated.

Interesting though, thanks for the link. I'm starting to wonder why any school would choose Edexcel, if more reliable boards are available.

Because Edexcel is the most popular exam board by far for maths A-level all the resources on the internet are geared around it. It also has a far better textbook and worked solutions than other exam boards.

And, from what I've seen, its papers are easier! If a student was put off by the Edexcel paper 1 because of the lack of scaffolded support in its questions, then they really wouldn't enjoy sitting an OCR paper where you're basically left to get on with it.

No. I think some parents come to the forum to push the narrative of ‘its not fair.’

some come for advice, which they get in spades and why the forum is great.

some don’t like what they hear and argue the toss.

referring to another comment, my understanding is that AI takes all the information it can get, including past papers. How else would it know that the questions were from Edexcel?

referring to another, the paper was not so much different from others. 2 questions were a little harder.

as I have mentioned before, an AQA paper from 2015 I think was MUCH worse. Very little happened other than a sort-of apology from AQA.

How else would it know that the questions were from Edexcel?

You said you put the exam paper into Claude, so presumably it just read the cover page??

Maybe it was unfortunate that Edexcel might have gone against some of their last guidance but I think this paper has illustrated that even a lot of A grade students have only a superficial mastery of the subject if they struggle with questions that don’t look exactly like ones they’ve seen before on past papers.

That’s partly a failing of the system where kids are taught primarily to pass exams but not master the subject in depth.

No. All pages were read I originally did it to check my answers and as mentioned before, Claude got one wrong.
I only put photos of the questions in.

Thanks, that and what you said makes a lot of sense.

I suspect mainly doing past papers only iis part of or probably the main problem.

If I was on dadsnet and thought dads were being silly, I would say so. ( I don't know if there is a dadsnet)

In my experience of being a private tutor, dads had a different attitude to mums. Dads tended to tell their sons that they were spending too much time on their phones/ computers, and they were too lazy. Dads were always telling their sons to work harder and get their act together. Mums were much more indulgent. Most of my private students were boys. When I was teaching, Most of my 'concerned parents ' had sons.

The mothers were worried, the fathers were annoyed, generally speaking.

I do believe that one of the students who signed the petition accused the paper as being worse than a war zone. Thus proving my point that kids of today have simply never experienced life or adversity. Put it into the perspective of students taking A levels in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s.

Have you never heard of hyperbole?

And this is something that parents on here are not taking into consideration. Your child is doing an extra A level, which equals extra UCAS points.

Even if they drop a grade somewhere, their extra UCAs points may allow them to get onto their chosen course. Although they may not get their required grade A, the university may let them in with a B. It is not all set in stone.

She’s applied to Durham, they don’t consider UCAS points overall so the Further Maths is just for ‘fun’ for her. But it might make a difference for others.

But she is confident of an A in her 2 other subjects so only needs a B in Maths.

I do worry that some capable students who gave it a good stab, even if a bit flummoxed by the change in style, may now be feeling less secure and demoralised going into future papers purely because of the hype. I worry that they will have a much more anxious summer waiting for results than they needed to have had because of the media coverage. Obviously if it is a materially harder paper, the schools will have seen the paper and approached the board and the regulator themselves. The unis will be aware and take this into consideration in August when reviewing exam results etc.

my DS did OCR but his GF did Edexel and said ‘yes it was a stinker. Am nervous I won’t get the grades I need now and end up in clearing, but I am just going to have to double down and make sure I make up some marks on P2 and P3’. As a by the by, my DS has also found that the question format and style has changed on AQA papers (physics and economics) this year - so despite having done every single past paper for the last 8 years, he has felt that there has been a deliberate move to shake up the papers and address perceptions of them being ‘too easy’. He has come out of several exams looking a bit pale and not wanting to talk about them for a while, but is still plugging away and hoping that he can pull off what he needs. A friend’s DS is doing History/Psych/one other - also same experience with usual format and wording of questions being changed. We’re taking the view that the changes are impacting everyone sitting the exams, so hopefully it’ll all come right by the time the grades are awarded.

Am trying not to feed into the panic by remaining calm and optimistic!!

Schools and universities don't need to do anything or be aware of anything. Grade boundaries are set so that the right proportion of kids get each grade, same as every year.

If the paper was harder, the grade boundaries will be lower because the kids did worse on it. We'll still have about 17% getting an A*, about 25% getting an A etc.