Ongoing A level exams: are your DC finding them hard?

[CaliforniaDrumming]

Ugh. DS appeared well prepared for the exams and has been working non-stop, but so far Economics ( his pet subject), Further Maths and Physics have all been very hard, apparently. Did anyone else's DC find them hard? ( misery loves company and all that). I hope the grade boundaries aren't too high.
He has a conditional offer from UCL.

DS sat Eng Lang earlier this week and said it was fine, then tested + for covid last night. He felt unwell and did a lateral flow.
He wasn't allowed to sit Physics paper 1 today due to the + test.
He's gutted, but will be given marks based on the two other papers he'll sit after half term. So, the disruption for this cohort continues.

DD has sat her first economics and history exams. She studied loads in the run up, I’m not sure she found the tests hard so much as time pressured. She didn’t always manage her time well and didn’t finish despite writing 20 pages for history.

How awful for him. Yes, endless disruption. The more essay based subjects must be very tough to manage for time.

Hoping for at least a few easy papers.

Try not to worry too much because if your DC found the paper unusually hard, chances are most people did and grades are all relative. Grade boundaries will be lower if it's a harder paper. I remember when my DC sat IGCSE Maths some years ago, they all came out of the second paper looking shell-shocked. Even the teachers were shocked at how difficult the paper was, but it turned out, an A* was something like 50% that year.

OCR FM was hard apparently so not just your DS. DS said he left the first 3 questions and went back to them at the end. He did a WJEC physics which he said was fairly Ok but things on it that weren’t on the list to learn, someone estimated that about 10% of the questions came under that category.

Thanks @catsetc and @Volterra. Nothing to do but wait and try not to worry:)

Is he doing OCR for physics too? Most schools will do a mix of boards, each head of department choosing the one they prefer. Our school does AQA physics and yesterday’s paper wasn’t too bad. Twitter mostly agreed on AQA but said that the OCR physics paper was hard. Hopefully if everyone found it hard grade boundaries will be lower.

My DD sat her first exam (Psychology) earlier this week. She's doing that, English Lit and RE and still has another seven exams and is terribly nervous. She said it was very hard but she thinks she's done ok.
Her firm is York and fingers crossed it'll be fine, though she does have her EPQ to perhaps bump her up.

DS has had 1 exam for each subject so far (OCR Sociology, OCR History & EXDEL Business). He though all of them went well but ran out of time in both business and sociology. He and his friends have all said that the exams don’t feel real. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. He’s got 2 more papers for each subject after half term.

He’s hoping to do international business at Sheffield and needs ABB which should be doable based on mocks.

Our ds has only had one so far - physics and thought it was ok. There's a long way to go. It is so.hard for them.

No really, but the sixth form college she is at are doing every thing they can to help them.

They have been running revision sessions, test papers under exam conditions during the week, weekends and holidays. As well as still running a full timetable until the last exam for the subject.

She even has sessions running this week for 2 of her subjects.

Consider most of the cohort haven't sat government set exams since they did their year 6 SAT's it not surprising a lot are struggling.

@MatildaJayne Yes, he is doing OCR physics.

He has a week's break and then an exam daily as his school follows a mixture of boards. 10 more papers.

All the boards set their exams at the same time to avoid too many clashes, eg OCR physics will be at the same time as both AQA and Edexcel physics etc. Hopefully the break will give him the chance to get on top of the rest of his revision and make the rest the exams less daunting. Good luck to all the DC taking exams. 🍀

Just history so far. Was ok but only wrote 10 pages so not entirely encouraging.
He’s not exactly wearing himself out with work and I’m really worried. He only needs EE and appears to be aiming for that which is a stupidly high risk strategy and he’ll be doing himself a disservice if that’s all he achieves. I’m very stressed about it all but I appear to be the only one in the house who is.

Dd has 3 exams over 26 hours next week typical when they're meant to be so spread out. I hope the first of those goes well because if not it will knock her confidence for the next one. She won't be able to ring or text me in between as she won't have her phone due to the clash.
I don't understand how exam boards know that all the papers are the same level? What if everyone doing ocr physics for example, get 80% but so did everyone doing aqa physics, yet ocr questions were harder?

i Guess there is an assumption that the pool of children on average is the same quality

although from year to year I seem to remember that they use average sats or something to determine whether it is a clever year when setting grade distribution

DD has only had one physics paper so far and she said that there was a 6 mark question on a topic that wasn't in the advance info. When the advance info came out they said that topics not on the list might appear in 'low tariff' questions which she was led to believe were the multiple choice questions. How are they meant to get through this if the advance info is misleading?

She thinks she did OK but it was harder than she was expecting because of this.

Similar happened in DS’s paper, I think he said it was 2 questions.

Same with my DS. He is on AQA and I think he said it was on waves

Similar story with physics here, two topics were unexpected, one was listed by the exam board as not coming up and one was to be a low marker, both came up for lots of marks. Now revising questions listed as not coming up for next physics paper!

Oh god yes! My DD can't eat or sleep and is making herself sick. Four exams to go I can't wait for the end of it.

I think it's natural at this point for some of the students to suddenly want to chuck in university. After months of revision and now the exams the thought of stepping onto an even higher level is probably too much to take in now. Once they have the summer behind them and their (hopefully good enough) results their enthusiasm may well return.
My daughter is in lower sixth with mocks starting Monday and she's already fed up!

I think it might depend on the different exam boards.
DS said FM was extremely easy and far easier than any previous years practice papers. He said his Physics went very well too although not quite as easy as FM. He is taking 4 A levels and needs A,A, A for his first choice Durham.
He does seem lot more stressed and snappy than usual. I think they will all be over the moon at the end of June when A levels are out of the way.

I can't wait for them to be over. DD is permanently like a bear with a sore head.

It may be subject specific but my son has found his first History exam pretty straightforward and I teach A level English and the two exams my students have had have also been pretty good (according to them!). I’ve noticed that they’ve worked significantly harder than previous year groups - I’ve marked lots of extra essays and they’re still sending them during half term. Perhaps because they didn’t sit GCSEs.