Mistake in Edexcel AS Geography paper?

[stonecircle]

DS did his first Geography paper yesterday (AS Global Challenges). He felt it was a bit strange, not like previous papers and he was frustrated because he felt he'd revised loads of stuff he couldn't use.

Leaving that aside however, this morning he says there is lots on social media about there being a mistake in the first question of the paper. The image used was apparently wrong (don't ask me what it was - something to do with plates). He says he was sure it was wrong but answered the question as if the image was right. Others have told him they knew the image was wrong and reflected this in their answer.

Does anyone know if there is any foundation in the claim that there was a mistake in the question?

If there was a mistake in the exam then the examboard will have been made aware by schools today (teachers are not supposed to see the question papers until after the answer scripts have been collected by the courier so most teachers see the question papers the day after the exam is sat).

There are protocols about how examboards should deal with this rare situation - either disregard that question (perhaps making the paper out of 90 rather than 100) and adjusting the grade boundaries or allowing a wider range of answers as 'correct' based on various valid interpretations of the faulty question.

They also look at the data to see whether the faulty question has resulted in an unusually high number of students not completing the paper (because they spent too long on the faulty question) and they adjust the grade boundaries downwards if this is the case.

Contact the school, tell them of the social media gossip and ask them if it's accurate and have they let the board know.

Thanks for the reply. The geography department has confirmed that there is a mistake in the resource booklet for the first question - the two tectonic plates are the wrong way round. Apparently when this happened with an A2 geography paper two years ago (so not that rare!) Edexcel credited students who gave the correct answer despite the source and also those who went along with the source.

It's just so annoying - first question on ds's first AS paper!

Hello all. Just looked at the paper again and there is an issue with the figure for question 1, though it doesn't impact on the way you would need to use the figure to answer the questions that refer to it. I'll make sure that the principal examiner is aware that there are concerns about it. The standardisation meeting for this paper is not for another week, where any ambiguous questions can be sorted in terms of how marks are allocated in a way that doesn't disadvantage candidates. In terms of "exam errors", this isn't really a serious error of the kind that you sometimes hear about in the news. I promise I don't work for Edxexcel!

That's reassuring. It may not be a 'serious' error, but anything which throws an already stressed boy planning to do geography at university is really not ideal!