Is it too early for an A level support thread!

[HereWeGo2023]

Hello all, apologies if there is already a thread but I can’t find one.
May had finally rolled around and the first exam is a mere 2 weeks away. Exam stress has hit our house! It’s feels like everything is about waiting at the moment - waiting for the predicted grades, waiting for the uni offers, waiting for the exams to start, and then the long wait for the results!
This is our youngest DD but the first one in further education so would love to chat to other parents going through this

Did you get to view the AQA Physics papers @Guinefort ?

If so - as per the discussion on lots of forums - were alot of the questions outside the scope of the syllabus ?

I fed back on the draft timetable to two of the exam boards. This was because DD would have had three exams in one day. Final exam timetable one was moved which was a result, not down to me as I am sure others must have reported similar. Without feeding back nothing will change. Well done @Guinefort.

@Forestfriendlygarden we've had rain! Not enough though.

Here too, but only little droplets, air better though break a leg all those with exams this week...

Fair do's @Guinefort. If there was a material difference in the difficulty of the different exam boards you'd hope this would be addressed, but that probably doesn't happen unless people complain.

I was trying to explain to my son that the whole 'different exam boards' thing was a relatively recent innovation, and then I had one of those moments of thinking 'who in the hell decided it would be a good idea to introduce market competition into exam boards?' And then I decided to stop in case I drove myself mad with fury. (I think there were different boards when I took my public exams, but in a much more limited way? Maybe I'm misremembering though.)

I know it's all graded on a curve yada yada, but what they can't account for is the distress caused to pupils by those papers - kids who thought they were well prepared and then had a nightmare with Paper 1, and what that does to their performance after that. (And DS2 wasn't actually one of those, he thought Paper 1 was alright. Although he did absolutely hate Paper 3.)

I did O levels / A levels in 1982 / 1984 and there were several different exam boards then, with some supposedly being easier than others. I think I did some that were University of London and some that were University of Cambridge.

And there were lots of CSE boards - over a dozen I think as they were more regional.

My O levels (in 1981) were set by the JMB (Joint Matriculation Board - always sounded quite impressive) but I'm sure some also set some by a University of Oxford board or something?

JMB definitely rings a bell. My O levels / CSEs were across several different boards (I did CSE and O level for a couple of subjects just to add to the total number of exams I had to take 🙄).

We did Nuffield exams for A Level science subjects as our teachers were of the opinion we had to "understand how to apply our knowledge" and not just learn the material.

That would explain the lack of A grades in my year in Physics and Chemistry

I’m not sure whether to make a formal compliant to the exam board or not but my autistic son had huge difficulties understanding the Shakespeare question in his English Lit A Level paper. I appreciate the irony of the situation but regardless all papers need to be accessible and he was completely thrown by this compulsory question. This is a tragedy as he adores Shakespeare, normally has no issue understanding the questions and this one caused him immeasurable distress. Luckily, the second paper,American Lit was more straightforward. I was told by Head of Sixth that several other students were challenged by the question but proportionately it impacted my son worse as syntax etc is highly challenging to him as he has inter alia a severe semantic/ pragmatic language disorder. Therefore a significantly challenging question to interpret would impact him disproportionately. The head felt that it would resolve itself via grade boundaries but I’m not convinced due to the seismic impact on my son due to his complex disabilities.

The last week has come at last. Three more exams for DS starting this afternoon with. Chemistry paper 2. Good luck to everyone else still going.

Was that the Hamlet question, @Oaktree1233 ? We were all baffled by that one.

Last one today! French Paper 2. All done by 11am

Four to go this week. Chemistry today. Needs an A in this for York so the pressure is on!

Now that we’re in the final week, I’m actually glad of 3 exams in a week. DD had big gaps between her earlier exams and when we saw the timetable I thought it was good and was dreading this final week with 3 in one week, but now that it’s happened/happening I’m glad to see the end. A week between exams 1&2, and 2&3 was fine, but the 10 day gap between 3&4 was just too much and was actually really demotivating - esp as no4 was on Friday, by which point some of her friends were finished and she was only half way through. I was unprepared for how it would affect DD not seeing friends or being around school for those 10 days. She did socialise a couple of times, but was mainly studying and it felt like a long haul with still a long way to go. In hindsight I’d have liked them a wee bit closer together. Two more to go - roll on Friday morning when this is all over and she can finally relax!

Completely agree about the demotivating effect of a massive gap between papers (not to mention the distraction of the Ashes starting!). Just the two chemistry papers to go here - roll on Friday lunchtime.

@lastdayatschool I haven't seen the paper and to be honest it would all be gobbledygook to me anyway even if it Y7 physics! My complaint was based on my DD's experience and the issues raised on various forums by teachers and pupils alike.

I'm not, by nature, one of life's complainers (more a get on with it and make the best of a bad situation type) but the catalyst for me was seeing a post on social media from a student who said they felt like killing themselves after Paper 3. Now I know teens can be dramatic but this particular post worried me enormously. The student went on to say they had let their family down and couldn't live with the shame of having performed so badly in the exam. My own DD was extremely distraught (although thankfully bounced back well enough) and reported that all her classmates came out of the exam completely shell shocked, many in tears.

So my complaints were that I believed the exam papers did not reflect AQA's own published A-level spec and past papers and this caused unnecessary stress and upset to a cohort of students already under a huge amount of pressure. That the questions was unacceptably abstract and required advanced application skills (way above A-level standard) and that students who are not naturally gifted mathematicians or studying Further Maths A-level were unfairly disadvantaged by this.

I had a couple more points but I'm late for work so got to fly now...

AQA computer science was very nice paper, whole DD’s class had an hour to spare. Might be A stars after the not good paper 1. Maths tomorrow and further on Thursday and off travelling for 6 weeks.

Ds1 said OCR Computer Science was "a really nice paper", high praise indeed. Just maths to go

Sounds a fair complaint @Guinefort .

Fortunately nothing quite so bad has happened here yet, but Chemistry this afternoon is the first our last week with 6 to go this week in total. Roll on the weekend! ALL of their friends have finished, some long ago, feels a bit flat that he will finish and just walk out on Friday and thats it, as they didn't have study leave so have all just left college after their final exam.

Computer science OCR ‘really easy test, went well’

One left!

Well done. We've got one left too, Wed. 21st. I'm tidying up and cleaning to get myself through it - in the hope that both of us can flop at the end.

I had “lots of writing but some spare time to go back over and check, went well” for OCR comp sci.

God, that's not what my DS thought 😭 Most of his classmates were like your DD (though not with an hour to spare) and preferred today's paper to paper 1. Trust my son to be contrary.

Bit worried about what this will do to his CS grade now, as for the first time he is quite downbeat about an exam.