Given incorrect GCSE AQA BIOLOGY exam paper

[HawthornBike]

Hi
My child this morning (10/05/2024) was given and sat the incorrect Biology exam paper, ( first GCSE AQA ). He should have been given the foundation paper however he sat the higher one. The Teacher who informed us was brilliant and confirmed a ‘special consideration form’ will be completed and sent to AQA. He also confirmed that he’d speak to the recruited external examiners. Is there anything else I should be doing.

Many thanks

The invigilator would have been given a printed out register which would show the name of the paper you had been entered for usually and it should have your candidate number on too. You should not have started the paper and should have asked the invigilator to call the exams officer in. You would have been given the full amount of time for the exam.

This is wrong. I was an exams officer until recently and it happened once to me. An incorrect paper was given to a pupil and they didn’t say anything when asked to check. It is possible for it to happen.

@HawthornBike special con will be applied. There is no way that the teacher can speak to the external examiners though. That’s just not a thing as exams papers are sent out to a large bank of recruited examiners to mark and nobody other than the exam board employing them would speak to them.

You can do higher tier in double

Different schools do it differently. We used “same seating” so pupils sat in same seat for ALL exams. Many advantages for pupils & staff/invigilators but meant checking papers was more important. Still only one mistake happened while I was there so it’s always possible.

Not all schools do the same thing, I was an invigilator and there were no separate areas for different papers/tier. All the non access arrangement students were in the main hall with a seating plan and paper to be sat. It was the invigilators job to make sure the correct paper was on each desk and I don't remember an instance of a candidate getting the wrong paper but it could have happened especially in science subjects with many different options

This really does happen most years in lots of places.

It's usually due to the invigilator doing the seating plan/papers wrong.

I grill my invigilators and I double check their seating plans.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow yes despite what a pp says, I would definitely go for F papers with any candidate looking at a 5 or below.

Genuinely I cannot imagine it is in any way easier to get a 5 on H. The percentage mark needed is certainly lower but that’s bc the questions are so much harder.

As I say, science is not my subject, but I am sure the same is true as for MFL and maths. There are crossover questions which are the hardest ones on F and the easiest on H.

Another thing is that if a candidate is likely to get a 4/5on H, they will only understand/access a third or less of the questions. How demoralising and dispiriting - and they are much more likely to do badly imho.

@TessHale were you just taking biology GCSE or were you sitting the biology paper of double science?

I have always found T&E very good but tbf have never dealt with the Wimbledon bc centre. I would deffo call them tomorrow

My son had this but the other way round
there was a huge delay in them starting the exam, and he was so nervous so didn’t check.
He takes his exams on his on (DCD) and was so flustered he just said to the woman beforehand I do higher.
It wasn’t until 4pm that he realised when he was talking to classmates and going on about questions saying they were weird. He has been devastated all weekend.
School were next to useless when I finally managed to get hold of them. One person laughed 😡
Going to be knocking on a few doors in the morning 🤯

Make sure you speak to the Exams Officer first- they are the only ones who can sort it out.

And tell him not to worry!

@clary thank you for your message. I just wanted (and paid for) Biology higher tier. No double science, this is why I raised the question whether the paper in front of me was correct, because it said “double award” the T&E staff member had no idea what it meant and couldn’t reassure me that it was the correct paper. But because we were so over time to sit the paper I think she just wanted me to get on with it.

@TessHale I'm not sure which board you were expecting to sit, but attached is a pretty good representation of a trilogy and a biology front cover from AQA. Please note I've just pulled images off the net - one is a predicted paper, so not published by an exam board. However they are very close.

We also use same seating so I always ask another invigilator to check the papers after they have been put out and then ask students to check they have the correct paper before we start the exam - so two extra checks.