A-level AQA Chemistry exam paper leaked?!

[NoNoNoooo]

Dd has sat a Chemistry A-level paper this morning and tells me the whole paper had been leaked and some of her friends were able to buy it on Snapchat 😮

She didn’t see the leak and was due an A* but this makes a mockery of the whole exam system. How the hell does this happen? My other dc (GCSEs, different school) tells me that exam papers are left in a room unattended.

Has this really happened or is this just dramatic teenage exaggeration?

If it has, then surely they now also need to take mock/predicted grades into account.

@NoNoNoooo - my son has a conditional offer to study Chemistry, so there's a certain amount riding on this grade.

I have advised him to try to focus on the three remaining exams that he has this week. Next up is Edexcel Maths tomorrow...

Sorry but that is not true. I take receipt of all of our papers and put them in to the secure storage. We've had all papers 1-2 weeks in advance including AQA. Only exception has been A level maths (Edexcel in our case) which do only come the day before.

One of the boards, and I can't remember which one, was doing a trial this year with only delivering papers much nearer exam day to a limited number of test centres. Was it AQA and your centre was involved in this trial? That might explain it if your papers have only been arriving last minute, but it's definitely not the case everywhere

Dd first told me some of her friends had seen it, now backtracked and saying it was actually people discussing it online who had seen it beforehand. She’s not snitching 🙄

If she knows people who saw the paper beforehand she should be doing th right thing and passing the names on to AQA She's not in the prumary school playground any more

I've also seen some screenshots from TSR which appear to be from yesterday: one user asked for help working out the answers to some (handwritten) questions which look familiar to anyone who took this morning's paper.

I signed for chemistry on Friday morning.

@NeverDropYourMooncup and @xyzandabc
What would happen on the day of the exam if an exam centre discovers that a whole packet of papers is missing (as will have happened here if the photos that have been shared online were taken on 13 June)?
Would there be enough question papers for the number of candidates?

They got counted out on receipt to make certain they're all there, so that shouldn't be a problem.

My point exactly. I can only hope that his uni will take the leak into consideration if he doesn’t get the mark he needs.

I suppose they’ll be able to spot quite a few cheaters a mile off as their other marks won’t back up what they got in this one.

My DD mentioned something to me last week about rumours a chemistry A level paper had been leaked though she'd not seen it. (she's doing GCSEs this year so wouldn't have affected her)

Someone somewhere is going to be in a great deal of trouble.

what actually happens to the grades in this situation?

Can't believe this. My son thought that paper went really well!! I will be so upset for him if they discount the exam. How on earth can this happen?

anyone have any update on what's happening. DN is very upset

I am surprised by the number of people that have posted that they doubt that this could happen. My son went to an elite private school in London for his A levels in 2015/16. A student in his chemistry class said he had heard that A level exams were leaked in advance, and his teacher replied something along the lines of "If you look hard enough, you can find them", but that he encouraged all his students to pass by studying hard. My son has always been scrupulously honest, but on account of hearing that, he went online and searched for and found a paper that was purportedly the exam for that year. He doubted that the paper could be the real one, so he studied hard anyway, but when he went into the exam, he said it was definitely the exact same copy as the paper he had seen previously online. (To put this in context, my son achieved A*s in his 13 GCSEs as well as his 4 A levels, and went on to get a 1st class Honours degree from Cambridge. He did not gain any advantage from having seen that paper, he simply can affirm that it actually happened.) The exam board held an investigation that year as well, and nothing came of it. They have probably "held" investigations every year since. To all of you naysayers out there saying it isn't possible that the exams are leaked, you are just plain wrong. It is infuriating that the exam boards allow this to happen. And infuriating that people who don't know any better claim (wrongly) that it just can't happen.