OCR AS Core 1 Maths today - DD in floods of tears

[Lottielo]

DD just called and said the exam today was much more difficult than any past papers and there was one question in particular which she felt didn't provide enough information to answer. She is in a terrible state.

Would be interested to hear from others whose DCs took the exam today or those who teach the subject. Was it really as bad as DD says?

If she gets a very bad result (likely), can she retake the exam next year at the same time as the A2? She's also worried about how this will affect her university applications.

Also, could she ask to take the Edexcel exams instead next year (she says Edexcel maths papers are much easier than OCR)?

My DS wants to be a biomedical scientist. I think that's pretty good.

I'm a maths teacher at a sixth form college and had similar comments from students saying it was hard. However we have similar comments from students every year. Doing a past paper is not the same as doing it in the hall with lots of others under pressure. Some of the questions ou did have to think about you needed to be strong at algebra for a lot of the questions. I think it was harder than last June. What I will say though is there are a lot of marks for methods and even if they haven't finished a question or done the whole question correctly they will pick up marks for method. A lot of students I teach tend to have the attitude I didn't get that correct so that's 7 marks off the total but they may have got 3 method marks. I sympathise with your teenagers taking them exams are horrible but nothing can be done about c1 and I started revising c2 half an hour after the paper with my students

I am sure any child who did the paper on monday will have seen this. Its light relief for what was a very difficult paper and this sketch (which contains swearing for those sensitive to those sort of things) and relates to the last question. Where A level candidates find time to do this sort of this is beyond me but good for them. My son was resitting C1 and for those that are facing AS for the first time it is true that C1 and C2 are much more easily understood by A 2 candidates which is why most retake and they all significantly improve their marks. The Board maybe wise to that an they have new paper coming in next year and this may reflect the new style. Three AS students left the hall in tears after not many minutes. My son was shell shocked by it. Let hope C3 and C4 are less demanding. having had 4 children in alternate school years go through a mix of GCSE and IB I have lived revision timetables for 8 years and cannot wait for the last one to finish.

I thought that some of you might be reassured by this article on the OCR maths C1 exam.

www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/students-left-level-maths-exam-11358536

Does anyone want to have a guess at the grade boundaries? Or know when they'll be published?

I hate those "look how hard these questions are, the poor kids, can you crack it?" things (implication, provincial journalist with a weak English degree can't do it, so it must be unreasonably hard, like all maths, and anywho who needs maths?).

Express x2 + 3x + 2 in the form (x + p)2 + q where p and q are rational is trivial: it's a two mark question because it should take a minute at most, and most students will do it by inspection and write the answer straight down. (p=3/2, q=-1/4). If it it's hard, you shouldn't be doing AS maths.

That question wasn't in the exam as it is an old AQA question.

That question wasn't in the exam as it is an old AQA question.

I know. I'm making a more general point, that dragging questions out of A Level papers and using them to say "how hard everything is" is silly.

I invigilated a fourth year Quantum Mechanics paper this week, which was sharing the hall with "my" paper. I glanced at it during the longueurs while my minions did the heavy lifting, and I couldn't make head nor tail of the questions, never mind think of answers. That'll be because I haven't spent four years studying for a Physics degree, I suspect.

Humanities students are too used to being able to name a few modish French writers, witter on about the death of the writer and mutability of truth, and then piss off to smoke Gauloises

At least C2 was easy... apparently!

C2 was considered 'ok' here.

Statistics next, but not till June 15th I think.