Y11 2025-26 Exams have started - chat, support & drink of choice if needed here.

[UncomfortableSilence]

New thread for all of us with lovely Y11s to support them and us through the coming weeks.

Think we need the luck for English Language here. Slightly different format of paper but really hoping for friendly questions/ texts.
Good luck to everyone else too.

Very grumpy and snappy ds this morning. Hes been ok so far but english is his least favourite although he favours language over lit. We all just kept out the way/quiet and said good luck as he stomped out the house!
Really hoping for a happier child on the return! And then only 1 day with no exams till half term
Good luck everyone today

Good luck to all the kids on fence with possibile grades 3 to 5.
It's DDs worst subject so just he glad when it's over.

Good luck to everyone with English. It’s a subject where some excel and can be creative on the spot but others find it very hard and dare I say boring.

I am firmly in the camp of creative writing can be pre prepared as long as can be adapted tightly to the prompt which in itself is a skill.

At some point the curriculum/ exam boards are going to have to embrace AI and test knowledge differently as AI is going no where.

Good luck to everyone for English today! DS looked knackered last night but a bit more spritely this morning.

He is in school tomorrow, Saturday AND next Tuesday for revision sessions so definitely needs a couple of full rest days over half term.

Good luck to everyone today, especially those who will find it tough. Hoping for a good paper for all.

On the parental support and help and use of AI or memorising stories etc…let’s face it don’t we all just do what we feel is going to help our DC most? And if we as parents have a particular skill - whether that’s writing or maths or speaking a second language - of course we’re going to use that skill to help and guide and benefit our DC.

At the end of the day whatever they’ve practised or memorised they’ve still got to go into the exam on their own and physically perform, on their own, in exam conditions.

They have all done so well to get through these first couple of weeks and we are.nearly at half term! Planning a few treats and nice meals out for next week. Going to be hot where we are which on one hand is lovely but on the other not great conditions for revision!

Did anyone else have the issue with the errors in the comp sci coding paper on Tuesday- think it’s Edexcel. Can’t believe they didn’t check more carefully and seems really difficult to make it fair now as schools dealt with it differently.

Good luck to the DC doing English Language today . Both mine did it last year - no prepping - didn’t cross my mind to be honest - though DS1 very self sufficient though STEM orientated. Would I have helped him prep some ideas if I’d thought about it - probably but he absolutely would not have let me .

Business Studies this afternoon - builders still bashing about outside … 🤦🏻‍♀️

Good luck everyone. All do your thing and do it well

I really quite resent the suggestion that if you don't help your child cheat you are not doing your best for them. I am there endlessly for my child. He does not generally want help from me but occasionally I've tested him on subjects and we have discussed "themes" for English etc. However, I would never draft something for him to memorise, no matter how much I want him to do his best. And he wouldn't ever have wanted me to do that either. But anyway, we are never going to agree.

Help my child cheat 🤣
I hope your child does well @Verite1

Good luck to all our children doing exams today, then a break - they need one!

Yes DS did @happylittlebirdy

Our school sent an email advising that they contacted Edexcel once they realised there were errors and then made announcements to students (“using wording Edexcel instructed us to use’) during the exam to let them know that there were discrepancies between the printed paper and code files. They’ve advised that Edexcel are investigating and will confirm in due course whether special consideration will be applied.

I’n quite shocked that the error wasn’t picked up by Edexcel prior to the exam starting. Printing errors do happen from time to time of course but usually the exam boards have proof read and picked this up in advance, and issue erratum notices for invigilators to read out to students in the exam room immediately prior to the exam starting. So all students get the same advice prior to exam starting and so despite there being an error, they all know about it, and thus the playing field is as level as it can be.

I’ve never had a situation before where the exam board hasn’t advised of errors in advance and students have had to be interrupted mid exam. As you say all schools will have dealt with this differently as there was no advance notice.

I suspect Edexcel may end up having to apply special consideration to all of them.

Makes me think back on the discussion of a couple of days ago about it apparently not being an advantage to be able to have coursework for English iGCSEs. I wonder how much of the submitted coursework was done by AI or parents or teachers? It's very hard to know how to take the pressure off having so many exams when plagiarism or submitting work that's not your own is so much easier than ever before. AI detection tools are in no way fool proof. The whole way that things are assessed in general in some subjects needs an overhaul but that is easier said than done though.

Honestly I do think anyone who has the ability to memorise an entire story probably also has the ability to cut out the worst elements of AI (overly wordy yet lacking in any discernable meaning) so will do fine. AI generally goes for the sycophantic word salad approach which is why I don't like it much.

There is of course a wider issue with AI about what using it does to brain development and some researchers at MIT are looking at this. Results so far are not good (for people, good for people making money out of AI probably). Really there should be a much wider debate about its use in Education. But this is very off topic.

Yes I have now found out this happened in DD's exam (two mid exam interruptions to state there were errors in questions 1 and then 5) and caused her considerable stress.

I'm not really sure applying special consideration across the board will even be fair given different schools announced the errors in different ways - so not a level playing field. Had a look on reddit (obviously not necessarily a true representation) but there were people on there saying their school hadn't mentioned the errors at all or only one of them.

I'm slightly hoping they just scrap the results from this paper and base the grade on the first one as DD is better at theory than programming!

Edited to add: though that won't be fair to those kids good at programming who can really shine. Anything they do will be unfair to someone though.

Mine did OCR computer science and feedback is that it was "brutal" and "2023 paper reincarnated" (apparently the 2023 paper was particularly hard!) It made me wonder how they determine grades? Does each exam board have quotas for grade boundaries or are they calibrated across boards?

The edexcel exam sounds like a fiasco, those poor kids having to contend with that after English in the morning too....

Wow that's really shocking about the CS exam. Really bad.

I doubt they’ll scrap the paper @tiredallthetimeandfedup

But what they might end up doing is disregarding those two questions completely and marking the rest of the paper as if those two questions hadn’t been included. So say if those two questions were worth 10 marks and total paper was 100, they’d ignore them and say total mark would be 90 (as an example).

It is additional stress our kids don’t need though!

Oh yes, that would be a good approach, possibly with special consideration on top. Although it still won't be entirely fair as some children might have stressed endlessly over those two and wasted time whilst others will have just done what they could.

It's really difficult to understand how this wasn't picked up well before the exam - does no one check it?

Half an hour until end of English… then 11 days break; a well needed circuit breaker. But dreading revision in 31 degrees all week in Surrey. Better than in the actual exams I suppose.

The board here is Edexcel and it’s a two and a quarter hour exam, a bit of a slog. I said to DD this morning to keep an eye on the time and be strict in moving on to the next section when it’s time to do so. This advice was not appreciated in the slightest 😂🤣

The edexcel CS exam sounds awful. Terrible that mistakes weren't spotted before. Thankfully DD does OCR which she said was hard but ok - whatever that means! I really feel for all the kids who did Edexcel.

Would they redo it on contingency day - someone was suggesting that on Reddit?

Oh yes! Isn't that the sort of thing it's there for? Could work and be fairer to all.