Up to the staples: maths edexel higher non calculator

[MaffsMover]

DD is freaked out because this mornings Edexel Matgs Higher non-calculator paper had 17 (?) questions rather than the usual 20+. She thought she might have the wrong paper but apparently not, and it’s worried the whole class.

DD has really worked her socks off to get a 6, and we talked about getting to the staples in the middle, and then some, to do this.

but the staples have moved! Is this a problem?

She says she found it fine, and answered everything apart from the last question which she had no clue about.

It sounds like she has done fine if she did it all save the last question. Often the final question is the one that separates out the 9s from the 8s.

That’s nice to know Spiral. Phew!

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to us that the staples may change.

There's been lots of chat about this over on the Y11 thread... seems like a lot of them were thrown by the different format and found it tricky.

"Up to the staples" is just a rule of thumb - 50% of the marks are of grade 4, 5, 6 difficulty and the other 50% are grade 7, 8, 9. The staples are obviously in the middle of the paper so that will roughly be where the paper starts getting more difficult, and we say "up to the staples" so that grade 6 candidates don't start panicking when they can't answer half the paper, as up to the staples is where they will be getting most of their marks. It's different to other subjects where candidates aiming for lower grades would still expect to be able to have a go at most/all questions.

She should have worked through the paper, attempted as many questions as she could do and not panicked because it won't have been all of them. If she managed to put anything for any of the later questions, that's good.

Ah, thank you, that makes sense. I don’t think she found it tricky, which is partly why she was freaking out. She finds maths difficult and she thought it was the lower paper, although she’d checked.

I will go and have a look at the Y11 thread.

Sounds positive then!

Hmmm, I was always told that if you found the exam easy then you’d got the wrong end of the stick! But my family are pessimist’s.

From experience, people don't tend to come out of a maths exam thinking it went well when it actually went badly. They tend to know when it went badly!

English, History etc I think you could go off on a completely wrong tangent on a long essay but there are so many questions on maths papers that would only lose you a handful of marks.

interesting Nobel, yes, that does make sense.

I have looked at the year 11 thread and this exam seems to have thrown them all.

Yes my daughter came out and said there were no staples!! She felt that the easier and harder questions were all mixed up throughout the paper, although she said the last question was really hard too. At least they've got two more papers to get some more points from!

2025- the no staples year.

I like your optimism loops, let’s hope! A 6 would be blooming amazing but please let her get at least a 4!

I picked up a copy of the paper today - it definitely feels a bit lightweight so I can see why some students were alarmed, but it is 80 marks.

It does have staples! I'd say the grade 7 topics start the page after the centre page which is about what you'd expect.

The second to last question was a pretty straightforward grade 7-type surds question rather than grade 8/9 so the difficulty gradient of questions wasn't as you'd expect. I think it was a fairly accessible paper to a student aiming for a 6 who has been taught some grade 7 stuff, so it's entirely possible she did have a good go at all bar the last question.

Thanks Noble, we shall see how the next ones go!