Edexcel A-level maths leak

[noblegiraffe]

Latest info from the exam board:

qualifications.pearson.com/en/news-policy/qualifications/a-levels/maths/a-level-maths-update-17-june-2019.html

They’ve found where the leak came from and police are involved. They’ll use statistical analysis of performance on previous papers to identify students who benefited from the leak, and will possibly disqualify them.

Potentially the blacked out questions that were available will be discounted from the exam.

I read on twitter that the paper was shared around some independent schools - these will be looked at closely.

No idea which school it is, but it's a shame to point the finger at a school just for being high performing and in the right area...

I agree that the penalties should be high, but I wonder how far the net should be cast. I don't know how much could be seen without payment, but I think I've read that questions were shared in Whatsapp groups - maybe someone bought the paper then shared it. If that's true, then students might have seen questions unwittingly. Where is the line drawn in this situation? Do they disqualify every member of the group who opened those messages?

Images of most (if not all) the questions from Paper 2 were shared within a group for those holding offers from a particular university.

I don't think we should speculate on which exam centre is responsible until it has been investigated.

It is not pointing a finger at a school because if you know the area there are a few schools in that category all competing for sixth form students

Sorry fifiesmum I didn’t see that it was schools (plural).

@TheFirstOHN do you mean Paper 3, or was Paper 2 also leaked?

I'm sorry, I meant Paper 3.

SarahMused - My DD sat the maths paper that was leaked last year. She didn’t see the leaked information as was away at school and all social media was blocked. However found out in the sumner that nearly all her friends at her old school and other schools nearby saw this. Her school complained but the exam board also claimed on that occasion that the leak was limited and contained to a few schools. This was not true. My DD knew far more students saw this than the exam board claimed.

I may be wrong but I do believe that the grade boundaries for that paper were also very high. She was also one of those students who performed much more strongly in that paper than others. She missed her A* (but still got the grades she needed for her place) but remains convinced that the leak impacted this.

Isn’t it a bit dodgy that they will do statistical analysis to try and identify people who cheated? I suppose it depends on the threshold for ‘guilt’ but the very nature of statistics means that the very very unlikely does occur! Ie it is possible that someone without cheating does very well on specific questions and rubbish on others.

Due to nature of marking/exams and how individual questions can impact on a student’s performance on a whole paper - I hope all those who sat the exam are given a free chance to re-take the whole paper and that unis look sympathetically on this

Namenic,

I wonder if the statistical analysis will be aimed at the students at the schools known to be involved?

Correction:
www.tes.com/news/watch-edexcel-boss-warns-level-maths-cheats

I think it is going to very difficult to address this. The Maths A Levels students in my DD’s year, all thought the 3rd paper was much more manageable that 1 and 2, so had hoped to pick up marks on paper 3.

I guess they will know at least some of the people who cheated on their exam so will have those as exemplars.

Signs of cheating won’t necessarily just be ‘did better on the leaked paper than you’d expect’. Examiners will be looking out for answers without evidence of working, or dodgy working and unexpected correct answers, or groups of students producing identical memorised scripts. Sometimes kids at school will go online and find a paper before we use it as a mock and you can spot that they’ve done this.

noblegiraffe I spoke to dd about this and her worry is not so much the 'obvious' cheats you mention - people getting answers without relevant working out, etc, which presumably the analysis could pick out fairly easily - but that anyone seeing the paper in advance will effectively have had extra time to do the exam. So they might not have done the paper beforehand, but just reading it through and knowing what to expect would make them hit the ground running in the actual exam. The pattern of work in the exam would surely then be the same - workings out as normal, even some mistakes, but just without the same time constraints as those seeing the exam for the first time. I'm not sure if that could be detected with statistical analysis?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/25/police-investigating-maths-a-level-leak-arrest-two-people/

Update from Edexcel: 78 pupils will have their results withheld and they are looking more closely at pupils who did well on the 2 widely spread questions compared to the rest of the paper.
www.tes.com/news/78-pupils-results-withheld-after-level-maths-leak

Edexcel have also admitted that the whole paper was leaked and not just those two questions.

I don't understand how they know which 78 students to withhold results from.

You have to hope they have it right because if some of those are innocent they could lose uni places, etc.

The article seems to suggest they traced the leak to one centre (does that mean school) and excluded all results from that centre.....but what if not everyone at the centre was involved?

They said circulated among ‘closed social media networks’ so maybe those 78 were members of whatsapp groups known to have shared it?

But not everyone in the group would have seen it before the exam possibly? Though I guess WhatsApp says what time you viewed something. But what if someone thought it was a stupid scam and ignored it?

I would think it is all from a particular school as they previously arrested older individuals (staff?), and are perhaps looking at papers of likely associates of those who shared it online. Will be embarrassing for the centre if so.

Thanks for that Noble, certainly appears to be one dodgy school with some dubious morals, I actually feel a little sorry for Edexcel as as others have said whatever exam board that school didi would have been in the firing line.

I think the school would be very much at risk of losing its status as an exam centre if staff were involved. Which would be a huge thing & probably lead to the school closing. It’s hard to see what the motivation would have been if it was staff. The risks and consequences are far greater than any gain.

You would think so but If it was just a couple of rogue staff ( much more likely than a whole school policy) then they presumably didn’t think through all the consequences just about the immediate gain of having excellent exam results for their groups.

Taking away exam centre status would be huge, does anyone know if it has ever happened?

@noblegiraffe
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/765268/Malpractice_for_GCSE_AS_and_A_level_summer_2018_exam_series.pdf
For 2018 you can see breaches but doesn’t clearly state sanctions or maybe I can’t see what they were ?

If the centre manager (usually headteacher) or Exams Officer were involved it would be huge. And if it was other staff then procedures have not been followed so also very serious.

To be honest I'm really surprised this isn't a bigger story in the news. Particularly now they've admitted it was the whole paper. But it's ok the board have apologised! I mean really! I assume there's an ongoing investigation and that's why things are quite vague.