GCSE maths today

[Kfor]

Has anyone got feedback from their teens about today's Maths GCSE paper 3 (Edexcel)? My DD thinks it was hard😬

Mine also said there were 3 that she couldn't answer or struggled with @Fizbosshoes

This must be about the A level maths a few days ago not gcse today

How can that be, they couldn't possibly have made a problem yet

Interesting that both A level and GCSE have had the same complaint

Eta as I've read further and see you were wrong

Our exam officer reported it to AQA too. It shouldn't have caused too much issue because the higher insert has the same info as a Foundation insert but just has some extra bits added on - but the students don't necessarily know that so could be some confusion/time wasted. No harm in complaining if it impacted your child and pretty poor on the part of AQA tbh.

I was.

As you all were..

As an EO, we have to keep the papers until 24 after the paper’s published finish time… yet they still end up on TikTok somehow straight after the exam. Very frustrating!

My daughter really struggled with the ocr maths foundation paper too. She was upset and panicked in the exam. She found the first two papers hard but this was by far the worst.

Yes, OCR maths foundation very difficult today.

Just hoping he's done enough to get the 4 and avoid resits!

It makes me so sad. I really feel the foundation papers should be as accessible as possible as you need a higher percentage to pass. They should start off easy and the very end use to be similar to the start of a higher paper. They are also making the language so much more difficult too. The higher papers for ocr have also been so much harder than usual.

Same here, high achieving, enthusiastic mathematician, was stumped by a few of the questions. Tears and disappointment yesterday but all good now.

Dd - who is a very able mathematician indeed (she’s pretty sure she got 100% on Paper 2) - reckons EdExcel Higher was a hard paper.

She thinks she probably got a higher mark on Monday’s further maths paper than she did on yesterday’s maths paper.

DS said he thought it was the easiest of all the maths papers

The higher edexcel one?

It's interesting how differently students experience the same exam, many others seem to have found it much tougher. Sounds like the paper happened to suit your ds strengths. When they receive their grades, will they also find out how they did in the individual exams?

You just get the overall mark when you get the results. To see the marks for each paper, you'd need to request to see the marked papers (you can ask the school to do this and I think it's free)

Edexcel here and DD (aiming for a 6) said it was really hard & the rest of the class agreed. She's not too bothered because it's not something important like film or drama or English which I love. We're fingers crossed the other two which went well will compensate.

Okay, I've just done the Edexcel paper myself just now, and while I agree it was harder than the last two, it's perfectly manageable, and the last few questions would give the grade 9 students their chance to show why they deserve a grade 9.

No nasty surprises as far as I'm concerned. The geometric proof question was tricky and looked very much like an UKMT Intermediate Maths Challenge problem.

The very last question was Hannah's sweets mark 2. If students know about forming and solving quadratic equations from algebraic fractions in a worded problem, then it's not too bad.

xsquared what an unhelpful and patronising post. ‘Perfectly manageable’- maybe for an adult who is great at maths and not sat in the pressure of an exam hall.

Not sure why you find "perfectly manageable" so offensive.

It means just that, and it varies from student to student. I'm not saying it wasn't hard, but it wasnt impossible either. There are plenty of questions to score enough marks to get whatever grade the student has worked for and deserves.

Im assuming you're a maths teacher, perfectly manageable does sound condescending to my ear too

How do you explain students not finding it manageable? Are you implying they were all at fault?

Most of the time, students do vastly exaggerate and think they've done really badly. I would normally ask them about the paper if they felt like talking after the exam.

They tend to focus what they couldn't do rather than the many other questions they did answer. They then go from "it was impossible, I think I've failed" to actually, it wasn't that bad.

To put into context, last year you needed 121/240 to get a 6. That's 40/80 on two papers and 41/80 on another.

To get a 7, you needed an average 153. That's 29 marks they can afford to drop per paper.

I think ‘perfectly manageable’ is a perfectly okay description.
I can’t see why anyone would object to such an innocuous phrase!

DS found yesterday’s Edexcel maths paper was, “Fine, no problem.”
It all depends on individual strengths.