Advance Information

[Pandaeyes50]

I have kids doing both GCSES and A Levels and it just seems like the advance information wasn't really all that helpful as it didn't apply to low tariff questions.
My high achieving A Level student especially is stressing about questions that she probably didn't revise as thoroughly due to it not being a focus type question.
Anyone else have kids feeling the same.

I think this seems to vary by board/subject.

Mine have found it a mix of very helpful (e.g. GCSE AQA Maths); quite helpful (e.g GCSE AQA Religious Studies; A Level AQA Geography) and "covering so much of the syllabus they might as well ignore it" (OCR Science - GCSE and A Level).

They haven't found had anything between them (I have 1 child doing GCSE and 1 doing A Level) where they thought it was misleading.

I’ve also got 2 taking exams, DC1 exam board didn’t provide any information so she revised for all of those 2 subjects, exam board for 3rd A level provided fairly accurate information

DC 2 also A levels had advance information for all subjects but were encouraged by school to revise everything and as they use SENECA also covered the entire syllabus there. Still found odd questions not covered but happy as things stand

For GCSE geography and history it seemed very clear cut, and it did mean whole chunks could be missed out. Maths was never going to be very useful, since most topics are tested every year, although I guess some will have found it helpful knowing which paper things would be on.

For science it seemed to be relatively little that was omitted, and quite confusing (some things come up under more than one heading, for instance), and DD didn't really take any notice of the advance information (so she could do most of that physics question). In school they repeated most of the practicals which were to be tested, and that was probably very valuable - particularly as lockdowns may have meant that some schools hadn't had the chance to do all of them previously.

I think there was some extra choice of topics in French so they didn't have to have covered everything, but again, fairly confusing (and DD took little notice as she is continuing).

1 doing gcses and taking 12 so far only an issue in aqa physics with 2 questions in first paper that advanced info said not in. 1 has been changed now and everyone got full marks. Paper 2 is being redone as same issue so hopefully ok. Was a 10 marker other one so not ideal but she has done 20 exams so far and its 1 question from that.