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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Original poster

anyone else's DC do AS maths today?

16 replies

lilolilmanchester · 27/05/2010 21:21

DS said it was horrific - apparently even the cleverest, hardest working kids found it tough. Interested in whether this is the case, or whether it's a "didn't do enough work, get excuses in early" exercise???

OP posts:
Rafaella · 27/05/2010 22:03

Was that OCR Core Maths 2 - the different boards vary. My DS said it was v difficult, but he was expecting that as he's finding it tough. Has your DS discovered the Studentroom website. All the kids discuss the exams they've just taken on there, but it can be scary because they all say what answers they wrote which is great if you got it right but if not just makes you more anxious.

maddiemostmerry · 27/05/2010 22:07

Yes, my son found it very difficult and said the most able in his class struggled.
Hope that helps you!

Original poster
lilolilmanchester · 27/05/2010 23:05

Yes, OCR (which I'd not heard of before, DS's school mainly AQA)... yes, most able in their year found it tough too. Just asked DS if he's heard of studentroom but he tells me even just talking to his own pals afterwards is too much!! Wonder if any maths teachers will see this and comment? DS not a great worker, but bright, and suspected he was claiming "tough paper" to cover himself.

OP posts:
brimfull · 27/05/2010 23:10

dd di decision paper today -is that the same one.
She's A2 but the modules are all mixed up so could be the same.
SHe found it ok so more than likely it is a different one .

Original poster
lilolilmanchester · 27/05/2010 23:22

probably different ggirl, this was AS, def not A2

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ThatVikRinA22 · 27/05/2010 23:24

yep. mine did. he thought he did ok, but was in college by 07.00am for revision classes! the last question was apparently a bugger. DS mentor at college has a maths degree from oxford and found that one hard!

Original poster
lilolilmanchester · 27/05/2010 23:33

sounds like he did well then Vicar. The 10 A* GCSE girl in DS's year reckons she only answered 2/3 of the questions

OP posts:
ThatVikRinA22 · 27/05/2010 23:42

dunno lilo....that remains to be seen. he has special needs. everything is an effort for him. but he deserves a good grade, he left our house at 6.25am this morning in a taxi that cost him £35 to get to that revision class. my fingers are soooo crossed for him.

Original poster
lilolilmanchester · 27/05/2010 23:46

will cross everything for your ds too vicar, you must be so proud of his dedication, he could teach my ds a thing or two x

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ThatVikRinA22 · 27/05/2010 23:49

trust me - that dedication waxes and wanes! id love him to pass it though. he needs to, or next year the college have said they wont fund his place. so fingers crossed,

aswellasyou · 28/05/2010 00:02

You might not be aware, but marks tend to be standardised so the difficulty of the paper is recognised. You can ask your children (if they are studying staistics) how they do this using a Normal distribution... Unfortunately, they don't do it at university and I had a seriously tough maths paper today.

Original poster
lilolilmanchester · 28/05/2010 00:11

I did say to DS earlier that if marks are still standardised, then if it really was an objectively difficult paper, it would "all come out in the wash" I was just trying to ascertain on here whether others had found it hard or DS making (predicatable) excuses. fingers crossed for you too aswell x

OP posts:
mumoverseas · 28/05/2010 07:19

DS1 has had a couple of maths exams this week and he said one was really horrific, very difficult and even the teachers said it was a hard one. Will double check which one it was

webwiz · 28/05/2010 08:06

DD2 did the OCR core 2 paper, she found it ok up until about question 8 (I think there are 10 on the paper) when it got really difficult. She managed to do most of it but resorted to writing notes to the examiners about what she was trying to do but didn't quite work!

Her teacher said if its a hard paper grade boundaries for core 2 can often be as low as 54/72 for an A (75%) rather than the normal 80%. So if it was a toughie all the grade boundaries will move down.

I did wonder if she hadn't quite done enough revision but I will be nicer after reading this

Rafaella · 28/05/2010 09:07

Here is the link to the Studentroom discussion which may put your DS/DD's minds at rest (or not!) about how difficult the paper was. Somewhere in there is a list of all the answers someone amazingly clever has provided. My DS is refusing to look at it.
www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1282137

mnistooaddictive · 28/05/2010 11:18

Best not to look at the answers. It will onoly panic them. It can't be changed and the emphasis now needs to be on the exams still to do. Worry about results in August when they really know!

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