TMUA - PETITION querying scores

[port123]

Hi,

There seems to be a lot of issues about the TMUA result scores especially for able students who sat it on 14th October and got significantly low scores.

Reading a post on student room - https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7641490
There seems to be a feeling from parents that the TMUA results have somehow been mixed up and handed to wrong students.

Parents have now started a petition.
https://www.change.org/p/request-pearson-and-uat-to-investigate-the-october-2025-tmua-assessment-process?source_location=search

Can anyone reading relate to this (able child, says did well but got low score)?

The thing is....the point of the TMUA is to differentiate between all these A star students. They are all able but at this level they're not all going to be scoring 6 and 7 and 8, despite what they have been scoring on past papers. They're at the point where they may be the most talented mathematician in their school, but then put them in a global pool of talented mathematicians taking the TMUA for maths, computer science and economics...the score distribution may be different from expectations and can be a shock to kids that have always been top of the class and excelled. To take the TMUA in the first place the student is of course extremely able....it is just there are other extremely able students taking the exam as well

Not got a child taking this but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that errors have been made. When my child did maths exams they always knew almost exactly what score they had as it's right or wrong not a more subjective subject. The MAT for Oxford 2024 entry was a right shambles and from DDs school it resulted it some surprising results for who got it and who didn't for maths. I think it's reasonable to push for results to be looked at again.

DS took the TMUA last year. He said the new test was much harder than all the past papers. He always got full marks with about 20 to 30 minutes to spare whilst practicing. On the actual test, he barely completed with no time to check. He got a 7.6 and felt it was fair since questions were intentionally misleading with minor differences in the answers. The test is designed this way, similar to the MAT and aimed to differentiate the candidates at A/A star level. Some of his peers who were predicted A stars got 3 or 4s. They changed their UCAS choices after results were out.

I've been watching that popcorn TSR thread all week and now it has descended into personal attacks. A couple of the parents on there are totally unhinged and quite frankly are being plain mean. I understand they are emotional about their kids not doing as well as expected but TSR is not the place for parents to whip up support...have they not heard of Mumsnet?

One young person is holding their own and has just about stopped short of telling them that they are deluded about where their children sit on a normal distribution of A star kids, most of whom will have listed Oxbridge/G5 institutions on their UCAS. This is before factoring in the piles of highly scoring international students. One only has to look of the number of Chinese applicants (who have trained for the Gaokao) to see why some of these UK A star candidates are coming out pretty low on the curve.

I don't doubt that the data breach fiasco has caused jitteriness and the lack of transparency is infuriating but there is a bigger picture which it seems some of them may not be aware of. Its painful and I'm embarrassed that adults are talking to young people the way they are on a student based forum meant primarily for peer to peer support. They literally should be the grown-ups in the room.

Edit - Also TMUA is multiple choice. It's marked by computer. The mark is the mark. It's highly unlikely that students have been given someone else's score. I guess it could happen but I kind of doubt it.

@Combinatoric I have been reading it as well and totally agree with you. it was embarrassing to read.

They can just be transparent and prove to students/parents that the system breaches did not affect the results. Its not that hard to pull up the data and prove it. Transparency will go a long way.

The TSR thread is bizarre. It would be grave for Pearson to misrepresent the data breach; what they have described should not affect scores.

Nothing is impossible but in the first instance I lean towards the majority view expressed above.

Two things immediately come to mind. First, I wonder whether everyone is aware that TMUA marks were rescaled in 2024. Old exams being taken as mocks would have been marked with a higher score than they would earn under the new system

Also - and we see this at university all the time - when students mark their own mocks they can be very casual about it. If they are sure they have the correct multiple choice answer, they may not even be checking it properly, just totting up the marks. Some of the mock scores may be inaccurate , because TMUA multiple choice questions have wickedly deceptive answer options.

A bit of explanation might be a good idea but the cynicism because these pupils are predicted three or four A stars is really inappropriate. The point of TMUA and similar exams is to distinguish within this group.