Medicine 2026 Part 3

[MyGreyBiscuit]

Hi everyone, here's the new thread!

Hope you feel better soon @MyGreyBiscuit

We've got OCR maths tomorrow...hoping it's not horrendous!

thanks @Katyapup ! I'm teaching tomorrow too, and have a whole day of meetings so I'm not sure how long the voice will last. We've got Pearson Maths tomorrow.

DD said all her (medicine offer holder) friends thought the OCR Chemistry was 'mid' but that the less locked-in kids thought it was horrendous (except locked-out Olivia who said 'if you think it's bad that's usually a good sign' thereby proving the Dunning–Kruger effect). She thought Edexcel Modern History paper 2 was OK, it's her least favourite topic so glad to no longer have to think about Mussolini. No revision tonight.

Sorry to hear about your DD coughing @PurryGrowls but at least she got finished ok. The OCR chem sounded tough but I do think our YP are more harsh on themselves than some.

DD had AQA chem 1 today and thought it was 'mid' but thinks she did ok and seems reasonably happy so all good before bio on Thurs. 3 down, 6 to go, two weeks and it will all be done!

Good luck for tomorrow's exams, I think it may be maths but DD (luckily) doesn't do this 😂.

Would cough sweets help with the coughing? One of my DC had to take cough sweets into an exam - they showed them to the invigilator at the start who asked that the outer wrapper was removed.

Yes, she had some but they didn’t really stop the severe coughing fits unfortunately.

Her cough is actually a bit better today but the dreaded sick bug kicked in around 2am this morning. You couldn’t make it up! She’s been v poorly all day but finally feeling better this evening. So I think she’ll be ok for bio tomorrow pm, if a bit fragile. She’s done v little revision today though. What a week, my nerves are in shreds! Just have to be grateful she had no exams today and it’s been short-lived.

Anyway, hope maths was ok for everyone? I heard rumours it was quite hard - fingers crossed it was manageable - and good luck for bio tomorrow!

@PurryGrowls oh dear you have had a lot of additional stress in your house over the past few days! I hope your DD feels well enough to face bio this afternoon.

DD had a wobble yesterday whilst revising for bio and psych 3 (tomorrow). We talked it out and I just think she is exhausted now which is making her tearful when overwhelmed. I am praying bio paper 1 is not too bad but you can never tell and DD prefers chem so I will be waiting for the post exam reaction later today with bated breath 😂.

Anyway, all I can say is thank goodness DD didn't have to face the maths paper yesterday as this sounded awful. Hope your YP that did it survived ok.

Good luck to everyone for bio today 🍀

@bluefineliner Waiting for the post-exam reaction is the worst! Hope your daughter feels more like herself today, 2 exams in one day is really tough.

Oh no @purrygrowls, your poor daughter (& you). Hope she's feeling much better today and can take Bio.

We had Maths yesterday - not EdExcel, I'd say thankfully, but OCR also had a lot of comments online about how awful it was....my daughter said it was terrible, and students taking FM saying it was awful....hoping Bio today is kind

Yes... we are currently 2/2 for bad exams (ie, those that make it to social media with 100s of complaints and online petitions and remakes of WW2 videos...if you've seen it, you know what I mean!)... let's hope bio is ok.

Think we have the same exam boards as you - OCR for chem and bio, Edexcel for maths. Here's hoping biology plays nicely this afternoon 🤞

We have AQA for bio. I don't know the difference - why are there different boards?

My DD has OCR for all three. Generally OCR is more problem solving, application and analysis than AQA and Edexcel. I think they sound better from a rounded education and future skills perspectives, but I don't think you can rely as much on memory and pattern spotting from prior year papers.

I don't understand why we have different exam boards when there is no standardisation of difficulty across the boards and no differentiation by board. Ok, so yesterday's Edexcel Maths was supposedly a nightmare. Everyone says not to worry as bell curve etc... but the OCR paper was quite nice apparently, so presumably students are more likely to get A* in Maths this year if they did OCR...

Money. Exams are a business unfortunately.

Grade boundaries for one board won't affect another. So you might need 90% is AQA but 60% in OCR, depending on the difficulty of each paper

Hang in there ! Almost done.

hi @mumsneedwine - that's good to hear. So does that mean that if students on OCR found it hard and exam boards concurred, then a 60% on OCR will still get an 'A' compared to an 80% on AQA? Ie student A 60% OCR will still get an A compared to student B 80% AQA?

What happens is all the papers are marked. The results are then plotted and it's always a bell curve. The top 4% ish will get an A star, so for one exam board this might be 90% (if students found it easier) or 60% (if lower marks were gained). The next x % get an A etc.

It's to try and ensure it's fair(er) and an easier exam just doesn't mean higher grades for one board over another.

Yes, exactly that. So hopefully grade boundaries will be adjusted to reflect these nightmare papers. It's just a shame it damages confidence as my daughter was so buoyant going in to the exams, but so deflated after Maths yesterday, feeling like it's all over.

DD was talking months ago about grade boundaries. OCR has very high grade boundaries for Chemistry so kids that are expecting As and A* know they will need to get pretty much every question right to achieve it so that will affect their perception of the exams as well.

It's usually about 82% ish fur an A star in OCR Chem, which is high. About 70-75% for an A. But the mark schemes can be quite generous which helps. This is the one I teach (because it's got the most logical syllabus to me).

There should be 1 exam board. But too many people make lots of money out of exams so there never will be unfortunately.

Thanks for clarifying all this - that makes some sense, and hopefully it all goes well today.

There's no reason why we couldn't have a single exam board as a state monopoly for UK A-levels. I think the UK is quite an outlier in how it operates. We could still keep the Cambridge overseas exams and make money off our exports!

I know all the official line about the stats, but there's a lot of unnecessary meddling. And I still think that particularly hard or easy papers are bad for students as I think the spread of marks is likely to be less and so it's harder to differentiate between performers. So the kids' concerns about hard papers are valid imho. Every mark will have more of an impact. And an easier paper may need to have more higher grades awarded: say for simplicity that a paper is marked out of ten and has 100 students sitting it. On a perfect paper, 10 students get 10/10 and are awarded A. This year the paper is easier than in prior years and 20 students get 10/10. You can't say, well, only the top 10% of students can get an A so we'll pull 10 out the hat to award A and the rest get A. Everyone with 10/10 has to get A so that year 20% of students get A*. I don't think the effect will be that pronounced in the real thing, but basically when marks are bunched you can't divide the students in the same way. Happy to be corrected by a statistician!

Please excuse the bold type caused when writing A star!

DD said biology was 'boring' because it was all plants and no human biology. She said most people were happy with it. She also seems to have replaced her standard 'fine' after GCSEs with 'mid' 🙄

I asked about the maths and she said her friends who did it said there were people in tears in the exam and afterwards on the phone to their Mums. Poor things.

our AQA biology was 'very good'. Thank goodness.

AQA bio here too but DD wasn't happy with her graph answers so was tearful afterwards. After she calmed down and thought about the rest of the paper she feels like it was 'ok'. DD is known for underestimating her performance and also being dramatic too so who knows!

@PurryGrowls DD luckily didn't have 2 today, just got psych 3 tomorrow morning after bio this afternoon. At least after tomorrow psychology will be finished for good 😁.