Any teachers of OCR Biology A-Level about?

[SasherinSuite]

ds reckons he hasn't done very well as the exam structure/content (?) was very different to the past papers he has been revising from. Biology isn't his strongest subject so my personal thought is that if he knew the subject well enough he would have done ok but I don’t want to rub salt in at this stage.

What are your thoughts on this year's exams? Were they especially difficult?

It's the first year of the new spec so there aren't any proper past papers to compare to.

I'm a maths teacher but my students who sat it were complaining about how the knowledge paper was unexpectedly all about interpretation (or possibly the other way around) so they weren't particularly happy either if that's any consolation! (Also annoyed about the missing formula)

Thanks noblegiraffe. Yes that's what he was saying, that it was about applying their knowledge of the topic as opposed to providing actual knowledge iyswim.

It was his last exam and I do feel sorry for him that it's ended on a downer.

Oh well, fingers crossed for lower grade boundaries.

I have an OCR A Level biologist here too. I would say that this year may be a year for lower grades rather than lower grade boundaries - well, that's my gloomy prediction anyhow!

The first exam was the really dire one according to DS I think the other two were relatively ok (general school consensus).

Oh dear goodbyestranger. Does your ds need a high grade in Biology? My ds was predicted and needs a B but reckons he'll be getting a D . Only upside is that Biology isn't essential for his course.

Yes he needs a high grade Sasher and it is essential for his course but I'm hoping that the general despair means that he's in good company with doing less well than he hoped. If the grades are down across the board/s then the unis may have to show flexibility. That's the optimist in me now!

There seem to be widespread complaints about the biology papers. My DD doesn't do it, but reckoned that it was very unfair on friends who had busted a gut revising.

That's how ds sees it. He now thinks studying the subject for 2 years was a waste of time.

I would hope that an A level enough useful content and/or learning skills to make the studying worthwhile as an end in itself rather than just a means of getting into uni. It does sometimes seem with both GCSEs and A levels that people can lose sight or the wood of education for the trees of exam grades!

Errol whilst your comment is correct that we should value the learning in the real world....

My DS thought it was the best of the papers, think he said the second one was the hardest.
Has found it a very odd set of exams

I taught the old spec A level, and was chatting to a teacher about the current papers the other day. He said his students were feeling cheated as a lot of the questions could be answered with minimal detailed knowledge. There were also some errors (the standard deviation Q), which is very poor, but seemingly par for the course this series

Another OCR teacher here. My students felt the second two papers went much better than the first. Some were genuinely shaken by that first paper, even the next day. They also felt it was very heavily application rather than recall. We put in a complaint to the board about the standard deviation question, just to add our voice to the others about it.
To be honest, I have no idea what to expect. It's wait and see now (and well done to those students who secured unconditional offers!)

Talking to ds about it again this evening and he said he actually preferred the 1st paper as it was more mathematical (which is more his thing ) so god knows what that means