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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Original poster

Current Year 11 - 2 more weeks of exams!!

949 replies

Rollergirl11 · 09/06/2022 20:09

New shiny thread!!

OP posts:
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25
chocolatenutcase · 10/06/2022 21:44

@Allotment123 I was in tears over my DS first eng lit exam. His English exams were always going to be hit or miss but I've found them so stressful. He's borderline pass in both against 7-9s in the rest of his subjects. I think we all need to treat ourselves after these exams. It's been a hard 2 years keeping ourselves going and our families.

legosnowqueen · 10/06/2022 22:10

@Allotment123 so sorry to read this, poor DC. Hope the school exam officer can reassure you.

FFF2022 · 11/06/2022 08:32

@Allotment123 hope your DC is ok now - so stressful. I am V glad the week of doubles is over. Mine thought English was ok yesterday (do not get much analysis) and took the rest of the day off - hung out in the park and saw friends which was good. Back on it today though as Maths and Geography on Monday and Tuesday.

Dancingbea · 11/06/2022 09:06

Really feel for you @Allotment123 my ds also could go either way with eng lit and Lang (and doesn’t have the back up higher grades that yours has). He worked really hard on the poetry and despite running through the outline of the paper before with him (he has asd) he answered questions on both anthologies in the exam including the one he hadn’t studied. Hopefully he will have written enough on the one he did study to just scrape through as he has extra time but I was absolutely devastated.

Original poster
Rollergirl11 · 11/06/2022 09:19

@Allotment123 sending hugs to you and your DC. Anxiety is a fucker isn’t it? DD suffers with it (is on meds for it) and she is incredibly agitated directly after she’s sat her exams. Luckily the school are very supportive and she is allowed to use an office to sit and FaceTime me in order to calm herself down. Without this in place there is no doubt she’d be having full blown panic attacks.
Hopefully the school EO is on the case. Was it just this exam they were particularly worried about? Is there a quiet room that they could potentially sit their exams in instead?

OP posts:
Notcontent · 11/06/2022 09:44

@Allotment123 i think a lot of us can relate to your feelings of stress. My dd is ok in the actual exam but there were lots of tears this week - it all got too much for her. I actually had to take half of Wednesday off work - which was not planned - as she was in such a state.

MrsAvocet · 11/06/2022 11:17

Hi everyone, hope its ok to join in. My DS is a bit upset because he says there was a question on yesterday's PE paper 2 they'd been tokd not to revise, which coming hot on the heels of the physics issue has stressed him out a bit. They are his 2 best subjects - he was hoping for 9s in both and has picked both for A level. I've tried to reassure him that one question won't make that much difference and showed him the update from AQA about the physics but it's not really helped. Now he is just annoyed that he spent quite a lot of time on that question and feels he actually made a decent job of it but could have just ignored it and spent the time on other questions. Same with the PE question which he thinks he gave a reasonable answer to but took time from other questions.
And time is important to DS. He has a vision problem and was assessed for eligibility for extra time but was right on the borderline and didn't get any. But he does always struggle to finish in time as it is, and something like this will definitely have thrown him a bit. So I'm not really sure that AQA's response really addresses the full impact of their error. DS is now panicking about the same thing potentially happening in the remaining exams, and whether if it does he should try to answer or just skip the question on the assumption that the same thing will happen. I think that's a bit risky, as if it turns out he has misremembered being told not to revise something or it was school's error rather than the exam board he will potentially lose a lot of marks. I'm trying to reassure him that it is unlikely to happen again, but that if it does to make a stab at the question but not to spend any more time on it than he would have done if it had been a question he expected. Does that seem reasonable to everyone else? Anybody's school said anything on the subject?

TeenPlusCat · 11/06/2022 11:27

to make a stab at the question but not to spend any more time on it than he would have done if it had been a question he expected

I think this is excellent advice for all exams anyway. Never let one question eat into the time for others. If you have 'spare' time at the end you can always come back to it.

legosnowqueen · 11/06/2022 11:48

@MrsAvocet the problem with this issue happening twice is that it's hard to have confidence in the advance information that has been provided for other subjects, so it's really disruptive to revision strategy. But I would always recommend trying to answer every question, as the Physics response isn't guaranteed to apply for other papers.

MrsAvocet · 11/06/2022 12:07

Yes that was my thinking legosnowqueen.
I'm quite angry to be honest. DS is pretty diligent and if he had been told to revise everything he would have done so he is now wondering if he should start trying to cram in the other things he has been told not to bother with. My thinking is probably not to, but to just carry on as before and turn up and do his best. If he cant answer something terribly well as a result of an error then lots of others will be in the same boat and grade boundaries will likely reflect that.
I would hope AQA are busily checking the remaining papers and would issue some kind of advice if anything else is discovered but its an extra uneccessary stressor for the pupils. As if this cohort haven't had enough to cope with already.

idiotfacelicker · 11/06/2022 13:01

Re the physics, there is no fair outcome. It wasn't fair assessing something some schools would not have covered. Equally it's not fair effectively removing the marks some students spent time diligently earning, possibly at the expense of earlier lower value questions because more time allocated to it as a 9 marker (as they are taught to do as good exam technique).

This is why AQA REALLY should have got it right in the first place, it's too late after the fact. This makes me quite cross as this shit was entirely foreseeable. When advance information was announced the potential for the kind of fuck up was mooted.

andwhy · 11/06/2022 13:12

I completely agree. My daughter says she spent quite a while on that question so didn't have time to check her paper. I think it's appalling that they are just allowed to go 'oh ops sorry' and not be held at all accountable.

daffodilandtulip · 11/06/2022 13:14

@MrsAvocet according to DD, the advance info for PE was slightly different, in that there wasn't a "don't revise this" list, just a "this is possible key info" list. So was less cut and dry than the Physics paper.

andwhy · 11/06/2022 13:15

Sorry I should have been clear, I was talking about the physics

MrsAvocet · 11/06/2022 13:22

Yes, my DS wants to do engineering so he is interested in physics, and his school had taught the full syllabus so he kind of knew it but hadn't revised it. So he did his best and probably gave a decent answer, but not as good, and definitely not as quickly as he would have done if he had revised the topic, and may well have list marks elsewhere as a result.
AQA seem to be failing to recognise that the effects of their error go significantly beyond the mark allocated for that individual question.I'm not sure what tgeir respinse should have been to be honest, but "Ah well, never mind, here's the marks anyway" doesn't really cut it.

chocolatenutcase · 11/06/2022 13:22

I've heard that AQA have checked other papers and that they are sending an alternative physics paper 2 out to schools. Hopefully this means the AI will be correct this time.

idiotfacelicker · 11/06/2022 13:25

chocolatenutcase · 11/06/2022 13:22

I've heard that AQA have checked other papers and that they are sending an alternative physics paper 2 out to schools. Hopefully this means the AI will be correct this time.

Cue the cock up where some schools accidentally get sent the original paper instead of the revised one...

DaffodilGreen · 11/06/2022 14:07

idiotfacelicker · 11/06/2022 13:25

Cue the cock up where some schools accidentally get sent the original paper instead of the revised one...

Show quote history

I’m an EO and since we can’t open any of the papers to check then yes this is possible and we 100% rely on the exam boards getting it right.

Fizbosshoes · 11/06/2022 14:18

I've been missing this thread, I couldn't see it when the last one finished!
DD said English was "alright actually" which was about as positive response as I can expect. She's happy that English is now done (even though she actually quite enjoyed it)
She did OCR physics so not sure about the AQA mix up.

Womblesaremyfavouritefood · 11/06/2022 14:42

Anyone else's DC completely run out of steam? Had the afternoon off yesterday after English, and now out shopping until later. They've worked their socks off for months, but they can't take their foot off the pedal quite yet - we've still got 7 exams to go .... There's nothing else I can bribe them with!

Stradbroke · 11/06/2022 15:00

@Womblesaremyfavouritefood yep. We’ve got a wall here. Trying my best to get him doing some maths, but there’s not much energy going in to it.

hoping once next week is over and there’s only two left being able to see the finish line will help.

MirandaWest · 11/06/2022 15:54

DD is a bit miffed about the AQA response to the physics exam. She’s pretty sure she’d have got the majority of the marks for the last question and would like to have been rewarded for it rather than the paper now effectively being out of 9 marks less.

But she’s back on it again now - has been doing a maths paper…

zighead · 11/06/2022 16:12

I'd be so annoyed too about the AQA response to the physics paper. Glad my DS didn't sit it. He just decided to revise everything for all three sciences anyway as found the advanced notice information ambiguous.
He did a biology paper 2 past paper this morning and then been out with friends. Hopefully he will do some Spanish later as hardly done anything for the writing paper.

TearingHair · 11/06/2022 17:01

Was it AQA who messed up and leaked the A level maths question three years ago? I think it was.

MirandaWest · 11/06/2022 17:43

I can't remember - my basic googling suggests some issue with Edexcel and GCSE maths in 2019 although they said it wasn't leaked so still not sure.