Continuing Year 13: January 2016

[Needmoresleep]

Only two more terms at school. Let's support each other support our DC in getting through to the end.

Sotaku I really enjoyed the shopping for uni supplies for DS1 .
I found myself buying a giant laundry bag in Lidl last week and putting it away. DS1's laundry bag has been very well used and always comes home full.

DS2 only doing 3 subjects to A2 so no exams until after half term. Study leave starts 27th May. I love the idea of them wearing their old Y11 uniforms for the day. The disadvantage of a sixth form college is that there are few traditions and the student population is transient.

Well, DS1 is safely off at his leavers' prom in his star suit! He had double breakfast today at school and a leavers' assembly and he's now on study leave. I hope he won't sleep through most if it!

Study leave starts on the 20th here. They have leavers assembly that day but DD2 has an exam first in the morning. No prom here until the beginning of July.

EllenJane - hope your DS has a fab night!

Prom night went well. The star suit was a hit and today he's a bit hungover, but still revising mechanics.

I can't work out if they have to wear uniform for their exams, I hope not but DS doesn't know.

Glad prom went well & star suit was a success EllenJane.

DS not going to prom - not really a party animal.

He's been revising mechanics as well, only two days until exam. Study leave starts at half term, end of next week but they can have half a day off before any exam which is before then.

I'm wondering if I could make him a laundry bag for uni. Maybe.

Good luck to DC with Maths tomorrow. DS1 seems fairly chilled about it.

Yes, M2 tomorrow. DS is nervous as he really needs over 90% and it should be his best paper, so he's worrying that it'll be horrible. I'm trying to convince him that if it is horrible the grade boundaries will be lower. He's just gone up to bed, with his phone.

Good luck to all our DC.

Sadly ds's Maths this morning is a resit C1 however he says he's getting 100% on the practice papers and is hoping to get last summer's grade up from a B to an A. He's also resitting C2 and S1

Good all all for the Maths and anything else this week.

Good luck even!

We are all having a night off, tonight. DS1 and 2 had exams, M2 maths and GCSEs but no more until next week. We went out for tea!

Dunlurking, I read elsewhere that C1 was not easy. I hope your DS found it OK.

Despite two DC taking it I still dont understand how maths works. DD was a bit disappointed in her C1 and C2 results last year but is not retaking, as good results on C3 and C4 would out trump the earlier results. Who knows. She did M1 last year, and did better than expected - these things have a way of evening out. S1 next week. DS is taking second year University exams and has realised that these will really matter, as he needs to start applying for either post-grad or work in the autumn. Poor kids. A levels are just the foothills.

My DS retook a maths paper today and said it was terrible. It's really made him anxious about getting his grades overall as he'd been working from a belief that this resit would lift his maths result to the A he needs. Ho hum. Let's hope the other papers are more manageable (not that I understand a single word of his maths stuff)

It depends if it's the same board, though. DS1's friends found C1 for OCR MEI ok today. Edexcel C1 was supposed to be hard. Hopefully if everyone found it hard the grade boundaries should be lower.

Ellen thanks, DD is also OCR MEI. Lets hope S1 and C3&4 are ok as well. The news reports about varius exams being harder than expected is worrying. Our DC are so close to the end. I really hope they don't become sacrifical lambs to the alter of raising standards.

bucking, I hope that grade boundaries are adjusted to compensate. I guess a bad paper somwhere along the line is inevitable but to have a tough one at the start is rough.

DS1 tried to explain the grading to me. Apparently if you average an A over the two years, you need to average over 90% UMS in C3 and C4 to get an A in maths. For further maths, average an A overall but average over 90% in another 3 A2 modules to get an A. Following me? This is for OCR MEI, btw.

Thanks Needmore. I'm sorry your Ds found today's paper hard bucking. As Needmore says, tough to kick off with a difficult one at the start. Last summer was like that for ds. I hope there's a nice one along soon!

Ds was doing Edexcel, I think. Fortunately he found it OK although not all did. It's the C3 and C4 I dread. I heard they were impossible last year! EllenJane it sounds extremely difficult to get an A* then! I think one would be way out of ds' league.

I have reached an age where I accept that there are some things I will never understand

The view on Student Room was that the C1 paper was hard so fingers crossed for those DC that sat it today. DD1 sat C3 & 4 last year and they were harder than previous papers. I don't think the grade boundaries seem to change with maths. DD1 was hoping for an A but got an A which was fine for her. DD2 is taking the papers this year and really does need to get an A. If C1 was hard, I hate to think what the others papers will be like 😳.
DD2 has FP1 this Friday.

DS exam was for Further Maths today, he thinks he did enough for A but not A. Which is ok, he needs an A in Physics or Maths for his offer, not Further Maths!

He has breathing space until after half term now. Leaver's day is next week and we seem to have been nominated for the continuation bbq.

hellsbells, the grade boundaries do change with maths, the raw score gets converted to UMS, but the UMS boundaries don't change, it's the conversion factor that changes. For OCR MEI, anyway. Not so sure about Edexcel.

Yes you are right Ellen. I just remember for Edexcel A2 papers last year there was very little movement in the grade boundaries except some of the applied papers you actually needed more that 90% to get 90% ums!

DS1 says that for some of the further maths modules, like M3, only those doing FM take it, so already only those pretty good at maths. This means that to get the same proportion of students getting an A* for example, they have to be in the top few percent out of an already bright cohort. i.e. the average is pushed higher so the grade boundaries are higher. It doesn't seem particularly fair that the exam boards stick to a rigid proportion of students for each grade when the cohort is brighter. You'd think that they'd understand statistics!

This means that to get the same proportion of students getting an A for example, they have to be in the top few percent out of an already bright cohort.*

But this is completely wrong, because more students get top grades at subjects which are taken only by "brighter" pupils. There are no quotas for the number of A stars by subject.

Around 17% of students get A stars at A level maths, but nearly 30% of students get A stars at A level further maths. See for example

www.bstubbs.co.uk/a-lev.htm

You can see that for subjects taken by a much wider range of pupils such as Media Studies the percentages of top grades are much smaller.

I'm actually a bit shocked that a student doing FM does not know this.