Edexcel Maths GCSE Mock yr 10

[JufusMum]

hi all, just looking for some advice.

DD has just sat Edexcel Maths Mock (year 10) the higher papers, and got 24/80, 24/80, 22/80. Looking online I am seeing the "guess" boundaries are showing her at about a level 4, so with another years work I am thinking that could push to a 5.
Should I ask the teacher to keep her on the higher paper or go for the foundation? She is Set 2 of 5 sets and the highest grade in her class was 31/80, 30/80, 31/80.

Advice very welcome thanks.

Can't answer the higher/foundation question but I think this years results and feedback from the exam board will be 'interesting'. My daughter has just sat Edexcel higher. She anticipated getting a 7/8 but was really freaked out by how much she couldn't answer. She's in the top set and she said some people around her just stopped writing, some were crying. What, I think, Year 10s will have is a more realistic expectation of how few questions they may be able to answer and more resilience to try and answer as much as possible. I think there is the capacity to go up from a 4 to a 6 with practise. Also the grade boundaries are expected to be very low though very possibly higher next summer.

Not a teacher. No doubt @noblegiraffe will be along in a while.

She got a ~4 in higher papers with a year to go.
Why would you even consider doing foundation?
I would have thought she could get a lot better in a year, so would be aiming for a 5/6 ?

imo keep aiming for higher, and if necessary adjust after the y11 mocks.

Hi JufusMum, you said "DD has just sat Edexcel Maths Mock (year 10) the higher papers".

Does that mean Y10s get a special Y10 mock paper from Ed Excel. Or did you do the Oct 2016 and Easter 2017 mocks undertaken by this year's Y11s?

We're hoping that kids in my school who got that sort of score in the Y10 exams will be getting more than a 5 in the real thing!

It's too early to be talking about changing tiers when we don't have the first set of results yet. Teachers will be waiting for the actual results to come out and then be looking at whether the tiering decisions they made for current Y11 were correct then making adjustments to current Y10.

But I think she'll probably be fine on higher.

Hi Noble

Just to confirm did Y10s get a specific Y10 test provided by Ed Excel?

I don't know about Edexel but AQA issued schools with a Year 10 end of year exam paper. I think teachers were supposed to send in their results so that national statistics could be generated.

I've not had dd's results yet.

I actually don't know if it was a specific year ten paper, l will ask the maths teacher. Thanks for a the responses guys x

Our Y10s just did the secure mock that Y11 sat in November 2016. I think they'll sit the real June paper for their mock in November, then the real November paper for a second mock in March. Edexcel are releasing another secure mock for November 2017, but not collecting the results this time.

My gdd just did mocks but I think they were end of year 10 mocks. Real mocks I believe are in December, they haven't cover
ed all the syllablus yet in all subjects.

NOBLE. Was the year 11 math paper as hard as was expected?

If the mock she did is GCSE standard then I'd say that she could jump more than one grade as she's probably not covered at at least a term's worth of work. (I'm assuming they finish at Xmas but they could be still learning up to Easter.
I would definitely assume that she's capable of higher but that's a decision that doesn't have to be made for ages.

Yes GCSE standard mock, she's in top set predicted 8 -9. Just curious if real exam was as hard as people thought it would be.

I haven't looked too closely at higher as my lot did Foundation but Edexcel was definitely hard, but as expected following the (exceptionally difficult) mock. I think students were more used to the level of difficulty by the real thing so it wasn't as much of a shock as in November.

Thanks noble.x

In our experience, the maths exams were still very unnerving! This was the general opinion on twitter/ other social media too.

It's mentally a very different kettle of fish.
Ds can get an A* on an old style test. He does it and it's confident that he knew 90% or so.
With the new style test he's only confident that he got 70% or so. He's not a grade 9 student and his weakness is trigonometry and there's always a question where he'd get zero marks as it's aimed to differentiate the 7/8/9 students. (He's possibly a 7 student despite the same proportion of students allegedly being awarded the same grade as last year.)
If you can mentally get around the fact that you can drop a lot of marks but still get a high grade it's not impossible but due to lack of past papers, he practiced with the old style tests so it's been a bit of a mindfuck for him.

Everything bar English and maths has been old style for him so for him so top grade= high percentage is what he's learned subconsciously. I think that's why a lot of year 11s feel that they've done badly. Hopefully they will be relieved when the government gives them a similar grade to what they'd have achieved last year. (Fingers crossed)

Best of luck to your D's eyebrowsonfleek and everyone else. Unfortunately DVDs math teacher told them next years boundaries will be higher than this years though I thought there would be concessions next year too.. Its all so confusing and worrying .

They always peg the number of C grades at about the same as the previous year (comparable outcomes) so even if the grade boundaries are higher (which they may be because the next set of students will be better prepared for the new syllabus), the pass rate shouldn't fall unless current Y10 are weaker as a cohort than current Y11.