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Secondary education

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GCSEs 2018 (11) Big week coming up

999 replies

mmzz · 04/06/2018 20:31

old thread

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Aragog · 06/06/2018 17:50

That's true Oratory about luck always playing a part. In this case though there are so many who have (potentially) gained an advantage that it could (potentially) impact grade boundaries for everyone who sat the paper. Run of the mill luck will be an advantage for those who eg had recently covered it but the numbers would be too small to have an effect across the board. Btw, I'm an interested observer too-DS did CIE!

Also an interested party - DD did L&R and had to do Singh Song. Other half of cohort did the one from the Sample paper, which they had been through in school with he teacher. So, clearly an unfair advantage.

Can't see how they can do nothing.

DD was also affected by the Computing issue where some students had potential access to the internet and the chance of accessing materials that could benefit them. DD had not done so and was almost complete, with pretty much full marks when the exam board decided that they were scrapping that element from the final grade - thereby disadvantaging DD: strongest aspect of her course gone, after already spending hours on it.

And now we discover she's in the disadvantaged group for English Language as well.

And then she was in a school where AQA sent the wrong History paper earlier this week too.

Three more exams to go - lets home the exam boards manage to not mess up any more for her this week!!!

Meanwhile, apparently IGCSE Spanish was 'quite hard, but hopefully did okay' - so, who knows?! She's been revising maths this afternoon and is having an hour with the maths tutor tonight for some last minute revision, hoping to cover some stuff that they think will come up on paper 2.

mmzz · 06/06/2018 17:51

@adrinkofwater Snap! DS has done no work for it either (apart from what the teacher forced him to do in the classroom). He keeps saying that he knows how to do everything in maths GCSE and is looking forward to the maths exam so that he can prove it.

DH keeps telling him not to be so complacent, and that it sounds a touch arrogant, but nothing will shift him. So, he watched a few mr Bruff videos and did some Tassomai instead today.
Either DS will prove himself right or he has a big fall coming.

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EllenJanethickerknickers · 06/06/2018 17:52

Forgot my phone today, so just catching up.

DS3 said music 'went well!' His board is WJEC. They have 2 'heard' pieces and 6 unknown. This was his 'fun' option. Not expecting any great result but he enjoyed the lessons.

Maths is his favourite subject so hopefully tomorrow will go well. Really not looking forward to English followed by history on Friday. I'm not sure he's every written for that long before.

sandybayley · 06/06/2018 17:53

@Teenmum60 - I don't think my message got through? Just sent you my email again!

KingscoteStaff · 06/06/2018 17:54

@Teenmum60
I hope I’ve beaten the deadline - only just got in from KS 1 moderation!!!

TerfTerfTerf · 06/06/2018 17:54

A bit of lovely news...our local pub always displays the GCSE art works in their upstairs gallery after they've been marked and moderated. Just got email saying the display starts 15 July so I shall take DS1 to look at his friends' work and we'll marvel at their talent Smile

AChickenCalledKorma · 06/06/2018 17:54

DD1 is doing OCR Additional Maths but I must admit I'm just trusting her with the maths and don't know what it covers. Maths is her thing and she seems to have it under control.

cubscout · 06/06/2018 17:54

Terf yes ds doing AQA Further Maths on 19th and 21st. However, he said he's not bothered and will consider exams effectively finished on 15th ! Shock

mmzz · 06/06/2018 17:55

Is anyone else's DC getting sent some fairly useful revision notes, vocab lists etc by their teachers which are great to get now, but would have been a lot more useful about 10 weeks ago?!

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AChickenCalledKorma · 06/06/2018 17:56

That's a really nice thing for the pub to do Terrible. Their first public exhibition!

TerfTerfTerf · 06/06/2018 17:57

mmzz My fear is the complacency will continue next year and they'll need a hard shock from a strict A level teacher to make them less blasé Wink I also cruised through O levels and consequently did really badly at As.

AChickenCalledKorma · 06/06/2018 17:57

Sorry Terf I think I just called you terrible by mistake. Talk about giving someone a warm welcome!!!

sandybayley · 06/06/2018 18:04

DS1 did an early GCSE last year and
missed an A star by 2%. I was a bit annoyed with him but it's actually worked wonders for his motivation and he now seems to 'get' the point of putting in the extra mile.

That's why I think it round be madness to not take exams at 16. Any DC who isn't mature enough to 'get it' at 16 has another chance at 18. I actually think DC are well served to take regular exams - as I said earlier the 11+ and 13+ have been helpful for all my DC.

mmzz · 06/06/2018 18:04

TerfTerfTerf it probably will continue, right up until they do an exam where they can't do the questions.
I found school maths easy too, but hit the buffers in a major fail at the Easter end of term exams in my first year of university. After that, I had to work really hard. Maths isn't fun when you can't do it.

I suspect DS will find his level too and then its just a question of how he responds to a challenge. The problem is that there has been nothing so far in maths to build resilience. I'm hoping that his struggles with English Lit will have taught him something instead and he'll just put his head down and get on with it.

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EllenJanethickerknickers · 06/06/2018 18:06

The AQA English Lit poetry problem is a complete pain. It's bound to disadvantage someone, whatever they decide. My DS did Ozy and had not seen that sample paper, so if they mark it more harshly than Singh Song, he will be unfairly marked down. If they ignore the issue, he'll have probably done worse than those who did go through it with a teacher. Sad

Stickerrocks · 06/06/2018 18:07

DD has the OCR FSMQ Add Maths on 19th. Not quite the same, but she's not going to touch it until the Sunday/Monday before. They've had an after school session once a week since mid-way through year 10 & I think there teacher has seen it as more of an opportunity to increase their chance of getting a grade8/9 in the real maths exam than for Add Maths glory. I don't think she's even seen a past paper yet.

Stickerrocks · 06/06/2018 18:10

I had my hiccup when I took my O level early and had to go on to prove myself in Stats, AO, A & S levels & degree modules to get over the humiliation. It wasn't even my fault, I was ill. I cried. It was made worse by getting an A for English at the same time. I was willing to do anything to swap the grades.

adrinkofwater · 06/06/2018 18:12

Terf DS is also doing the AQA further maths. No work done for that either. Not because he doesn't care, but he just thinks he can do it easilyHmm ! Maybe the weekend before I'll manage to get him to do a paper?
Mmzz glad DS isn't the only over confident one out there. I just hope he really does know as much as he thinks he does!

Stickerrocks · 06/06/2018 18:12

DD has Ozy, but didn't bother running through the sample questions again, because she had seen them in year 10. The exam board will do what they have to do to make sure that they get the right proportion of students getting the right marks to ensure that Tory Education policy succeeds. (I've lit the touch paper and I'm waiting for Sost to ignite!)

mmzz · 06/06/2018 18:12

Are there students who are better at the poetry questions than the plays and novel questions? If there aren't (or not that many), then maybe the fairest thing is to completely disregard everyone's poetry answers?

What did the exam board that got the Shakespeare R&J question wrong in 2017 end up doing? Anyone know?

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sandybayley · 06/06/2018 18:19

@Stickerrocks - DS1 is doing Ad Maths FSMQ on the 19th as well. He has been doing some work on it as he admitted it's the exam he's most worried about. He only has sciences next week and he's quite happy with those so I think he'll be doing work on Ad Maths to break up the science revision. He says he wants an A but I think that's a bit ambitious.

cubscout · 06/06/2018 18:19

adrink and mmzz another possibly overconfident one here for FM! I actually know nothing about Maths having scraped a B at O level. But if Maths is 'their thing' (it is for ds) then so be it. he said he might do a paper the weekend before. I hope I am worrying over nothing - getting a 9 and an A** is very important to ds but he has a tendency to silly mistakes. The he reminds me that he got an A in Y10 for AS Maths and he's 'more mature now'......

Sostenueto · 06/06/2018 18:20
Teenmum60 · 06/06/2018 18:21

Not sure whether this makes sense...but I suppose they could mark the L & R poem knowing it has been fairly marked ...then they could compare with P & C and score like for like (e.g. If the top mark was 24/30 for L & R then the top mark for P & C would also be 24/30 even if it was actually 29/30). Therefore P & C DC's still get the highest mark for the question but both the highest marks for the two poems are like for like and apply this to all the marking for that question...it would not affect the overall grade boundaries then for the rest of the papers. Doesn't have any influence on DD - IGCSE Edexcel.

Sostenueto · 06/06/2018 18:25

The fact is there was a leak on lit poetry for aqa, the poem that was supposed to have been the question was poppies. In their haste/incompetence they put in ozy. Now would everyone who sat edexcel been up in armd if ' tissue' had come up on aqa? If your DC knew nothing about poem on edexcel then that's down to DC. Its on the syllabus. It should have been studied. If anything they should just moderate papers as usual. In other words tough!