GCSEs 2019 support thread 4

[TacoLover]

The last one is almost full!

TeenTimesTwo I hope that’s what they said and stressed teenagers aren’t the most reliable source of information as teachers reading papers and giving students guidance is a big breach of regulations.

How would they see the paper before the exam?

DeRigueurMortis - both grouped and continuous needed to be circled for 1 mark.

Yes, the answer is continuous and grouped.

They would only see them if there was a security breach- they are kept in a safe in the Exams Office until just before when they are checked, signed for (by 2 people a new rule) and handed over to invigilator and taken to the exam room. Only authorised people are allowed in the exam room. At the end of the exam no one is allowed in to the room until the papers have been taken by the invigilator to the EO where they are securely packaged and locked up till the official courier comes to collect. It is (or should be) a very secure process which ensures all students are examined under the same conditions and the integrity of both papers and scripts are maintained.

DD was in a separate room with a scribe so she didn't have contact with the teachers. Probably her getting it wrong in the stress of her depression after the exam. I'm sure they would not have gone against the rules.

Arewedone Thestirrer On further discussion, DD confirms that no-one in their year, including the Further Maths people, could do the last three questions either. A few frustrated girls, though no tears. DD found the rest good though.

Bonkus DD agrees, apart from those last few questions, much better than paper 1.

IGCSE History - America and Medicine. DD pretty happy. Got a question on Prohibition, and also on the detail of some Acts she had just revised. For medicine, a question on womens roles in wartime and something along the lines of whether they agreed that science was the main driver for 19th century advances in medicine. Good meaty questions.

Wood and Maddie - thank you.

That's what he put so thanks for the response though either way it would have been good to know.

Silentsister- DS Alevel just went over the very last question , only one she could remember fully with Dd and it is an A level topic inverting a quadratic function 🥴

AQA maths today, DS1 just reported that it was "easy" and finished it in half an hour - I'm secretly petrified, thinking "are you sure it was easy????!!!" Can't hold my breath until August, but really... it amazes me that maths comes so "easily" for DS1

If only all the other subjects were like this!

On the issue of GCSE new grades - we know several kids who think just because the 9 exists, as the top grade, that's what they should get... regardless of how it's meant to be for a tiny percentage of students sitting that exam. It doesn't help that a handful of students at the school last year got 9s across the board, so DSs are already disappointed because they know they won't have "top" results. It's insane, and no amount of talking from me helps at all. Crazy horrible system.

bimkom congrats on the prize, how fantastic to be rewarded for effort not just result.

marmiteloversunite sounds like they were trying to reassure her

Ds now back home and seems v happy with Edexcel maths - last 3 questions were hard and he partially answered them - he felt he could have finished them if there was more time. And no questions in iteration yet or needing the quadratic formula. Crossing my fingers he hasn’t made silly mistakes- he doesn’t like maths and is predicted an 8 but on a bad day that could be a 7 or 6. One more to go!!

History he was pleased with - the 8 mark Elizabeth questions he felt were ok but not brilliant and he really liked the 16 mark Globe question which seems to have been badly received on Twitter.

Migration he was happy with liked the 20 mark question on Empire building. Crossing fingers he may scrape and 8 but would be very proud of him if he gets a 7. And he finished the papers which was fabulous as he often runs out of time.

Hope all dc are proud of their efforts today- for those dc stressing my experience is that students are often overly harsh on themselves and only focus on what they couldn’t do rather then everything they could do

Happy house here !! Food delivery with lots of (unhealthy) snacks have helped 🤣
Think we might foget eng lang revision tonigjt and just blitz biology .

Silentsister- rumour has it grade boundary is 75 max for a 9

Soursprout - beginning to agree, not sure what it achieves having all these different exam boards.

No idea how maths/history went here. DD is so shattered it wasn't worth asking her. She did say she had some timing issues in History and the narrative question on Mormon migration wasn't the best - I'm leaving her be tonight.

Thank god its Friday tomorrow!

Just popping back in to say I agree that the different exam boards is a farce.

It's not a level playing field.

Schools can claim one board is more worthy than another but it's arbitrary depending on the exam.

Oh dear! DS did AQA maths today and found it very hard. He said he really really struggled. He seems to be the only one who found it difficult. He was predicted a 7 but thinks that he is unlikely to get a 4. He also thought he had bombed paper 1 too. Yikes!

Yeah. ds not a fan of the mormon migration question either...

DS thinks history went well - Normans and Medicine. He is so pleased that history is done. Really needs to revise biology but is very fatigued. Now taking an hour's power nap - hoping short-term loss is long-term gain in attention span as a result.

DC almost on the home stretch now.

Matlow - I think its almost impossible for our DC to accurately judge performance on each and everyone of their exams (certainly for my dd is is!) - a "it was great" may actually mean they rushed through and made silly mistakes/answered the question they wanted to answer rather than one that was in front on them and "it was hard" may reflect focused working...Plus their minds will be playing all sorts of tricks on them. Hope he'll bounce back from (real or imagined) not best day.

Eng lang and biology will be done tomorrow.
Then 5 next week....then I think he'll probably sleep for 2 weeks!

Always happy to be corrected but I think the difference between IGCSE EDEXCEL and GCSE EDEXCEL is with the IGCSE has 2 papers with both of them using calculators.
GCSE has 3 papers, 2 using calculators and an additional non calculator paper ?

Dd sat the EDEXCEL maths higher paper this morning , seemed happy enough with it.
This afternoon it was EDEXCEL history again it was ‘fine’.
This has been her summation of all her exams so far - so i’ve no idea really.

As with many others tomorrow it’s Eng Lang 2 (WJEC- no idea why the Welsh Board )am
With Biology (AQA) pm.
She’s been on & off revising since she got in.
Looking forward to the weekend - today & tomorrow are tough ....