Y11 2023-24 thread 4

[Techno56]

New thread for GCSE survival 🙂

It is mostly a private school exam, yes. There were only two papers and no non calculator paper.

As far as I know they can be sat in state and independent schools to be honest I’m not sure how schools choose which exam board/type my DC does some igcse and some not, I only know from the exam timetable

Praise the lord, I don’t think either of us could cope with a delayed finish. Big blow up at our house today when a) he wouldn’t get out of bed then b) went straight on his Xbox. So near the end and he’s already gone into holiday mode, arggghhh.

A million years I did O level maths and Eng language at the end of 4th year (Y10).
We did NI board exams (in Northern Ireland obviously), but we did AEB I think because the English exam boards have easier papers, apparently
I have no idea if that's true. The grammar school system in NI is well known for thinking it's better than everyone else 🤣
We then did further maths in a year and did it with the others in 5th year (Y11)

Oh please no! That would be super unfair in the kids given it would be the exam board that messed up?!

Goodness the iGCSE maths is a worry for anyone involved. Hope it works out OK 🤞

Honestly feels like it would be unfair either way as could mean students that had done that particular past paper score significantly higher than expected and therefore skew the grade boundaries for those that haven’t done it, equally a student may do really well without having seen it before and then not do so well if there was a retake but there would be no way of knowing who had/hadn’t and moderating for it, I suppose it really depends how similar they are.

True @ThatGreenNewt. Just not sure I can face the prospect of more exams! 😭

That's unbelievable - how can the exam board not check if a paper is too similar to a previous edition as part of their review before signing off on it? Or am I missing something?

Sorry for any kid/mum who has to go through this again!

Exactly. What a ridiculous situation to put kids in. How hard is it yo check the last 2 or 3 years papers? Especially as 2022 woukd have been used as a mock or practice paper?

Not actually sure if we did iGcse or not. Lord.

I’ve just looked online and paper 2 is very similar, I’m surprised this wasn’t picked up before.

As an example here is one of the questions, most of the exam is like this, same style of question just slightly different numbers (one of them has the answer drawn on which is why they look different)

There are about 1300 pupils. Maths is the only set they split restare all mixed ability. Other local school all classes are in sets. DD is a 9 student in Maths getting bored of teacher keep repeating for kids who are struggling to understand also she has started to second guess herself now. Will see what happens in September when she starts GCSE work.

How awful for the poor kids concerned can't believe it was not picked up. Hope they respond quickly and the outcome is no resit.

I've been wondering whether the iGCSE maths thing would blow up..DD (Y9) is a maths whizz so I follow lots of mathematicians on Twitter and they have picked up on three issues in this year's various (i)GCSE maths papers. They've all been reporting them trying to hold the examination boards to account.
Personally, I really can't see an issue with 2024 being similar to 2022...DS has sat 46 iGCSE Edexcel past papers + the 6 practise papers for maths since Christmas and the questions just get repeated over and over again with minor tweaks. He'd never say 'ooo Mum, the paper I sat was very similar to the one I did the third week in April. He just would not remember that paper, even if he'd sat it a week beforehand. It would only really be an issue for the kids that happened to practise the 2022 1H & 2H in the immediate days beforehand & hadn't done loads of other past papers. I'd be shocked if Pearson acted on it.

Oh I am so sorry for those waiting to hear about contingency and maths.

we are going on holiday, in the rash assumption that the contingency day is never used.

On a really happy note, we just heard that dd has been awarded PIP.
Will make such a difference to her next year.

We are also going away, I hadn’t actually twigged about the contingency day until after we had booked… luckily we dont do igcse…

good news about the PIP steppemum

DC only has two papers left now, Physics 2 Friday, music listening on Monday. It's their birthday today, have done a bit of revision, we're going out for dinner together tonight (and I took them for a bonus patisserie at teatime). So glad this is nearly over.

I can’t see the maths igcse being a problem. Isn’t that the way with maths ? Questions can be similar but just with different values? My DC probably sat the 2022 paper (along with many others) and has no inkling that they were indeed similar. We’ve had no word from the school.
It’s not like eg English Lit where it would be obvious if the exact big marker questions were rehashed?
The paper wasn’t leaked either.
All sounds a bit bizarre.

I asked DS whether he's heard anything about the IGCSE maths issue. The answer is no, and he just shrugged and said there was no point in worrying about it until we know more about what's going to happen. And carried on his geography revision. I'm glad his reaction is more mature than mine! 😆

I really hope you are right @Bellini12!

What were the three issues @Paperclipp?

1. Dodgy Polygon in IGCSE Paper 1H 2024
2. The uncanny likeness of IGCSE 2024 and 2022 papers.
3. The final question on GCSE Paper 3, where pupils were instructed to use perimeter to find a lower and upper bound for pi.

all Pearson. The amazing maths teacher I follow is Tom Bowler whose handle is @Ridermeister. I'm not good enough at maths to understand the intricacies of it but he's posted the questions on his feed

(also I CANNOT spell 'practice' to save my life. Have a real issue with it!)

I get that it's not on to have errors in papers BUT I'd rather they hadn't kicked up a massive fuss about it whilst there are still two contingency days in play. The thought of these kids having to retake a maths paper at this stage makes me want to weep. I just don't think it will happen