Year 10 - end of year exams

[Wafflesandcrepes]

DD - generally a good student - got home tonight having done a first day of exams in GSCE conditions. Could only do half the questions in geography (due to running out of time.) Same with English. Anybody in the same boat either now or in the past? Is this relatively common? Thank you.

Did they have the full time for the papers?

Schools do this to gauge whether students need additional help. Depending on the reason why she ran out of time will indicate whether 25% extra time is necessary.

i think so. In geography, she had four questions for 8 points each to complete in 90 minutes. She says she can’t write that fast…

I'd speak to her English teacher or form tutor (whoever you think is most proactive!) and ask that they consider assessing her for extra time, upon ruling out exam technique issues - that she has just spent an hour on a question that should have been 15 minutes etc.

Which exam board is she doing?
4x 8 mark questions isn’t a standard format - geography has lots of 1-2 mark questions.
So they’ve maybe created their own format just on some longer questions.

So did she spend 45 mins each on 2 questions? That may be exam technique, not watching time, and carefully writing full sentences instead of moving to the next question and throwing in bullet points of anything she hasn’t had time to right out fully.

Amongst my daughter’s Y10 friends, generally they all finish the mocks - the difference is in length and quality of answer.

Did she get overwhelmed and spend a lot of time staring at the paper? How well did she know the material? I’d have a more detailed chat with her, then speak to the teacher. There’s too many different reasons to guess!

One of the things I explicitly teach my English students is how long to spend on each question. If she's had a full paper and the full time, it may be that she doesn't know how long to spend.

We don't use assessments like this to test for access arrangements. We do that by testing specifically for reading and writing speed.

@MrsHamlet also processing speed is a factor.

The assessments done as exams won't be able to be used for extra time, but they are a body of evidence to prove normal way of working.

There were actually lots of 1-2 marker questions as well. Not sure which exam board it is, sorry. I don’t think it’s knowledge-related, sounds like exam technique. She says she can’t write that fast. Really surprised and worried this is where we are at this stage… Nothing’s been flagged to us so far.

It sounds like it might be Edexcel A or B. B is more popular. Definitely not AQA - no 8mk questions.

It can be fairly common if they haven’t done a lot of exam practice and if exam technique isn’t well developed. This will improve with time. It’s also very common when revision has been lacking. Recall of key information needs to instant so that writing time can be maximised. A lot of pupils are pushed for time in Geography exams because there is such a mix of skills expected and the exam boards work on a mark a minute.

You’ll be able to support her home learning / revision better if you ask her what exam board she’s doing.

I’m a bit confused as to what she actually completed. You said it was 4x 8 mark questions and she did half of them. But she also had the 1-2 markers as well?

In AQA, there are multiple choice questions with single marks available, for example. So did she not do any of the short low mark questions, and get bogged down in the longer questions?

Board is Edexcel. She completed all the 1 (or 2) marker questions but only 2 out of 4 of their 8-marker questions.

I will check how effective revision was (she certainly worked hard) and will go through past papers and exam technique. Not that I feel qualified for this right now but I’m sure I can get there.

Might sound odd but how hard / meat is she writing? It’s not uncommon for girls in particular to write slowly because they’re aiming for neat (rather than legible) or because they’re pressing so hard their hand hurts. You shouldn’t be able to feel indentations on the paper

Another good tip, thank you. I will ask her. Her handwriting is very, very neat so this could be something else slowing her down.

OK, so I’m pretty confused now as to how much she answered!
You said she only did half the questions - 2 out of 4 worth 8 marks each, which is a significant issue. But then you said there were others with less marks too.
Find out from her if it’s modelled on an actual Edexcel paper.
Only Paper 1 has 4x 8 marks, but the total is out of 94. Answering 78/94 is very different to 16/32!
Obviously you want to support her to speed up (be that writing or planning time) but that’s very different start points - hoping for you both that she’s got through more of it than you thought!

Ask the teacher.....

@testina yes, I know, I was confused too. I think she was a bit stressed and focused on telling me what she hadn’t done instead of presenting the whole picture. Not as bad as I had thought. I just need to familiarise myself with all these papers.

Yeah, it sounds like it might not be nearly as bad as you thought! 🤞

Once she gets the papers back you need to check whether she was writing far too much for low mark questions, thus running out of time, or whether it looks like speed of handwriting / processing was an issue.

English Language always is tight for time.

(If she normally keeps up in class just fine with note taking etc I'd be tempted to think it is more likely to be exam technique.)