Crazy mark scheme for a GCSE question

[MrRidiculous]

Is it me, or are some GCSE mark schemes just f’kin awful.
Physics.
( Name change in the question to protect the identity of the board. )

The question asks to explain why the energy Alexis puts in is different to the gravitational energy he gains when he pedals uphill. It's already been established that he expends more than he gains.

Looking at the question, and answering it in detail, explaining all the resistive forces and describing how work has to be done when moving against them, I get just 1 out of 3 marks.

The other two are for naming the thermal heat store (1) of the surroundings(1)
Crazy… or is it me ? Surely the question should have included where?

How can students who give a detailed and accurate description of why, get only 1 mark out of 3 ?

Students who know their stuff and can answer a question properly are not being rewarded, yet those who can throw in a phrase stand a chance of picking up a few marks.
If you really wanted to explain the why into the surroundings, I guess you’d include the second law of thermodynamics and entropy, but that isn’t done at GCSE. ( Even after Gove )

Anyone else with shite Mark schemes ?

I don't teach physics but teach English, which has the opposite and very broad mark schemes which I only fully understood when I became a marker.

My dc will appreciate your post - I seem to remember them saying very similar things when doing their GCSEs.

It's particularly difficult in GCSE computer science. In OCR you have to memorise particular words and phrases to get the marks. For example if they ask about "utility software" then you have to use the word "housekeeping" to get the marks.

It reminds me very much of the old "bird brain of Britain" episodes where the bird had to remove the match sticks in exactly the right order to get the peanut.

My son has been making an extensive study of the GCSE Computer science options from different exam boards and says that OCR is the best, but it is definitely an exercise in memorising the specific words that are required to trigger the marking scheme. When my computer scientist husband tried to teach him actually graduate level CS we realised it was no use at all as knowing the subject really deeply is not better.

In fairness, they do at least publish books saying which words to memorise.

One of the most alarming we have seen was CIE GCSE Geography where they asked for a long essay on something with about 8 marks and only gave 4 lines to write on. The examiners report said that very few people did well on the question and I'm not surprised as there was no space to write the answer.

I would have to see the exact wording. It does seem a bit guess the term in the examiners head but stating the energy store the wasted energy goes is also reasonable. It is an energy question not explain the forces question.