2024 exam thread

[motheronthedancefloor]

Hows everyone's kids getting on with their exams / studying?

DDs first Higher exam is D&M I think. She's been busy working on past papers but feels fairly confident. She is least confident about Chemistry.

Oh I'm jealous @theferry , I am definitely NOT a historian..no clue and feeling like I can't help much with this.

I have a history degree but DD will not let me help her at all. I can only hope she does well. she does study for it and likes her teacher.

My area is biology, DC did let me assist with Nat 5 (and got an A) but he's not doing Higher - he's actually only doing one of the Highers I did, although I do have quite good working knowledge of one of his other main subjects (so we might do a bit of that together just to mix up the revision). I'm ill just now though so not much motivation for exams....

I did Higher History and love modern history, but even if DC had chosen it I might not be that much help because the topics at his school are completely not my area of interest! That said, there is the element of helping make sure they can construct good detailed and relevant essays, which they can reproduce well in the exam (assuming it's all essays still?).

I think as well with History and the other social subjects it's understanding the rules of answering the questions, knowing exactly what they are looking for when a question starts with explain/describe/evaluate/compare. This is the sort of technique which has been gone over and over in class in my experience.

essays and source questions I think, which sounds quite similar to my own History exam nearly 30 years ago.

This is what drives me mad with the way history is taught. There is no reward for being creative in the essays. You have to follow a formula of saying X here and Y here. It wasn’t until I’ve seen how higher history is taught that it makes sense why so many first year university students really struggle to write essays and deal with the demands of a degree in history. For some it clicks after the first year, but others never move past the formulaic approach to essays and therefore don’t perform well.

To be fair, that's actually a problem with how it is assessed not taught.An SQA issue.

Totally agree with the teaching / assessment of History. My son LOVES History and spends a significant amount of free time researching areas of interest. He did N5 and got a band 1 A but the formulaic approach to answering Q's and the reductive way in which he has to replicate knowledge did his box in. He didn't take it to Higher for this reason, despite the fact it's the subject he spends most of his free time on, and he's obviously academically able. Such a shame.

I totally get though why teachers teach the way they do. It's all about passing exams. DD is in her first year of uni and has really struggled with the analysis of literature in essays as it's not something she's ever been asked to do at school.

Is this really a new thing though? I remember being taught exam technique and how to tell the examiners what they wanted to hear even at Uni. We had one lecturer in modern languages who had his own very particular opinion on an author's poetry which didn't tally with more mainstream analyses, so in exams which you knew he'd be marking, you just regurgitated his theories back to him. Also at school you have zero input into set texts or topics chosen in things like History, you might really really want to do the topic on Britain and Ireland and the Easter Rising, but the topic chosen by school is the Atlantic slave trade. You just have to go with it.

Usually at uni you get a bit more flexibility to follow your interests, but if you haven't been able to start exploring your interests before then, where do you even start?

ds never did History, but I think Modern Studies is similar. He loved Modern Studies in 1st - 3rd year. They would discuss and have debates on topics, he found the subject matter interesting and really enjoyed the classes.

He did Modern Studies at NAT5, and while he still learnt a lot about the topics, the teaching method was much drier - lots of aching hands writing notes verbatim in class - as there was a lot of content to cover in 1 exam year. It put him off taking it to higher.

There was a discussion at one point about dropping NAT5 exams, perhaps this would allow the skills side of subjects like Modern Studies and History to develop further if time was not "wasted" preparing and revising content for NAT5 exams and the Highers were a two year course instead. Of course this would have the downside of Highers then being the first formal exams sat.

I don’t know how long this has been an issue in Highers as I did a levels, but I was certainly not taught that way during the early 1990s. I have colleagues with more recent experience of a levels and it seems there is the same problem with them.

History at university level is about debating ideas and looking at issues through different perspectives. Students who are able to look at things in different ways are usually rewarded with high marks (providing the rest of it is OK). Those who plod along do not get the higher grades. DD has been very much taught to follow what they’ve been told. There’s no space to be creative or challenge what they’ve been told.

Good luck for all the Higher maths people today. Hoping for a better paper than last year’s Nat5 horror!

Ds is sitting AH maths today. Has had a 3 week break since his first exam.

I'm taking ds to school in a few minutes, it's a very different atmosphere in the house on the morning of the math exam than the other exams. I just hope it's not like last year's Nat5 exam.

Good luck with Maths everyone!

Good luck for everyone who has maths today.

I’m fed up with Biology. Just a few more days Im telling myself.

Text from mine sounds much happier than last year! Just biology to go now…

Ds seems to have found the AH maths ok and left early as he was finished and had double checked everything

My eldest is meh about AH maths. He needs a B so fingers crossed he’s pulled that out the bag. He definitely hasn’t studied as much this year as he did for his highers. Politics tomorrow and he’s done bugger all.

ds is happier than last year. He says paper 1 went "decently" but he found paper 2 harder.
Graph coms and computing still to go.

@Igneococcus - interestingly DS says that most folk found the H maths papers same as your DS but he was the opposite and found paper 1 harder than paper 2. He's in ok form but says that was his worst exam. Fingers crossed for a pass 🙏
That's him done now, and last day at school as well cause he's not going back for sixth year.

Sturmundcalm is a great username @Sturmundcalm :)
All his friends found the second paper more difficult. This was ds' worst exam too.
What is your son going to do?

Ds said the advanced higher maths paper “wasn’t good” but he thinks he passed. Fortunately he has unconditionals so nothing is riding on it. Just computing science to go now.

H Politics today for DS1. The question he was dreading came up but the second paper was ok. He's predicted to fail this one but at least it's over.