Higher Maths Petition

[howabout]

My DD are a bit away from this but so far my experience of Curriculum for Excellence has been really positive. I have been following the news reports about higher maths being unrealistically hard and wondered if anyone knows more about it than me. I could not help feeling that there may have been a connection between the East Renfrewshire pupil interviewed being in shock at the exam questions and the fact that East Renfrewshire schools were highly resistant to rolling out the changes? This is my perception rather than a criticism but I would like to be better informed.

case

tha doesnt sound fair at all

Hi there. I just wondered with the kids going back to school after study leave if anyone had any additional information regarding the higher maths exam.
I keep asking my son if he has heard anything, either from his peers, or teaching staff, but, to be honest I think he just doesn't want to talk about it.
He needs at least a B pass to go to uni to study computing. He will be gutted if he doesn't achieve at least the minimum required.
It seems such a long time till August. He is constantly moping around looking miserable. I'm really concerned that now all has quietened down that the sqa will choose to forget all the fuss hoping that they can just carry on as normal. It was obviously a flawed paper, and thus should be marked accordingly. Any info would be much appreciated. Thanks

I'm pretty sure we'll hear nothing at all until after the exam results. The SQA are unlikely to admit that they made a mistake as it would tarnish the results of the whole cohort who sat the exam (as in "Oh, you sat the 2015 Higher Maths - the one that most people couldn't do")

I reckon the grade boundaries will reflect how difficult the exam was, and a question or two might be removed but they won't issue anything other than the usual explanatory documents.

I don't expect to hear anything at all tbh. We shall need to wait and see what grade dd gets and then wonder if it was her actual grade, a grade allowing for lowered boundaries or a grade reflecting questions being removed.

No point worrying about it though, onwards and upwards. She's sitting advanced higher maths next year so am crossing fingers it's not going be a similar experience.

Don't know if it helps, but I sat the Higher Still Maths exam in 2000, which was the first year of Higher Still. There were 2 questions, worth 5 marks each, that were completely impossible. We had been advised to focus on the questions worth more points, so many people struggled to do these and eventually ran out of time. We came out shellshocked and one of the teachers took the paper and spent ages doing the problems. She was able to do them but only by using techniques not covered in the Higher Still course (ie, stuff she had learned at university). There was a huge fuss and the SQA agreed to delete those 10 marks from the paper. Ie, if you had got 75/100, you would now be getting 75/90. Perhaps the SQA will do similar this time?

I must admit I have never heard of some questions being discounted. Surely that is not fair on any pupils who did manage to do them, and perhaps spent a lot of time getting there?

Well, it isn't, Purple, I agree. It would be very difficult to work out which kids had spent ages on those questions but would have been capable of doing the others if they hadn't, and kids who were less able to answer any of the questions, though. But if my child was in the same situation I would be loudly pointing out via Twitter/MP/MSP/Councillor/LA etc that if they did it in 2000, they can do it again.

I can't remember which of my dc it was but the same thing happened fairly recently. I think it was DD1 so around 2009? and the rumour was the question had been taken out when it came to mark it.

So the advice I give my dds of concentrating on the things you can do and then coming back to things you are stuck on still looks like the best exam technique for this situation?