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Anyone else have 0 faith in the exam system?

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It's annoying me that people are saying stiff like blah exam board sucks due to making a mistake. The markers are a bunch of teachers, who are human and amongst marking 100s of papers some of them will make mistakes.

For the vast majority of people who hate these exam boards, they blame it on these rare reasons so they can make themselves feel better about their own shortcomings in exams.
My friend got a B in his January A2 History exam a few years ago and decided to resit it to try to get an A as he was so close to it the first time round. He got a U in the resit. How can anyone have faith in an exam system that can produce such wildly varying results?! If a conscientious, smart, A grade student can fail an exam without the presence of extenuating circumstances then what else is going on? Sometimes I wish exams didn't exist and everyone could be taught their subject properly instead of being taught how to pass an exam :sad:.
Reply 82
Original post by james22
While the exam system may not be great, from what I'm reading it does just sound like people are blaming all their exam problems on markers and "unfair" exams.Have you considered that it may actually have been you that was the problem?


I'm not blaming my problems on the exam board, I got three A's, and one fail (for which it is my fault since I really badly messed up the exam)

The reason I have no faith is because you can have subjects like citizenship, where I did no revision and didn't get taught the sylabus, and still come out with almost full marks, despite not even knowing what the second half of the paper was on. Theres also times, as pointed out by several people already where you do loads of work for an exam and get a low grade, do next to nothing for resit and improve by a few grades. Also, for the Aqa English Lit at least, it seems that most people did extremely badly, with few exceptions, including oxbridge candidates and people who got full marks the first time round, and if anything it's the people who didn't put the work in who scored higher.

Eta: Actually, in regards to examiners, a few memebers of my family are/were teachers, and do mark exams, and for one (english literature), it's gotten so bad that she quit UK boards all together after twenty+ years marking, and 40+ as a teacher, and she isn't the only one.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by jennifex
I agree that it is annoying when papers aren't marked properly but, honestly, it is a little ignorant to expect that you are owed something for the work you put in to your own education, which benefits you at the end of the day. It might just be the way you worded it but it half sounds as if you would prefer that education wasn't taking up such a large amount of time and effort in your precious life.

I wish people would remember that they are very privileged to have a free education up to 18 at all. Sure the system is flawed in some ways but it's a damn site better than a lot of places!

(Also... examiners are human too!)


Well I'm sorry if I sound that way because I didn't mean to but I actually adore education. My point was that if we're going through all this, the least examiners could do is mark our papers properly.

Also, education is unfortunately not free for everyone. I don't know if you've recently noticed but the majority of people who have taken English language at a-level have been getting absolutely poor results, and this has been blamed on the examiners. Even a grade students have been getting Ds and Es
Original post by Besakt
Give the examiners a break, they mark hundred of papers, mistakes are inevitable they are human are they not? They are supervised through the whole process but some will always slip through. There is no system that is flawless.

You just criticise and haven't even bothered to suggest an alternative.

In subjects like politics and economics where the chances of examiners having a personal view on the subject is very likely.

It is irrelevant, you will get the mark if you can back up any claims you make, that is why in subjects like those evaluations, conclusions and backing statements up with evidence is so important.


Well no, it's just not fair. Why should we have to be pay 50 pound for a remark when examiners should have marked it correctly in the first place?

50 pound is a lot of money to most people. I know someone who had their psychology grade changed from a D to an A*!!! To be fair, the grade boundaries were real tight. It was like 2 marks between grade but nonetheless, that A* should have been what he had in the first place.
Examiners should be objective as possible.
Reply 85
Original post by Super Mario 64
Well no, it's just not fair. Why should we have to be pay 50 pound for a remark when examiners should have marked it correctly in the first place?

50 pound is a lot of money to most people. I know someone who had their psychology grade changed from a D to an A*!!! To be fair, the grade boundaries were real tight. It was like 2 marks between grade but nonetheless, that A* should have been what he had in the first place.
Examiners should be objective as possible.


If you go up a grade you get refunded. It costs exam board to get it remarked if it doesn't go up a grade then why should the exam board have to bear the cost after they have been put through unnecessary hassle?

Examiners are as objective as possible but they are human. They will make mistakes, emotions may be slip through but this is inevitable.

Do you propose a better system where there is absolutely no chance of mistakes occurring?
Totally agreed with you!!!!
My classmate crammed all the past exam papers and got all straight A grades. He was PATHETIC at classwork, tests and homework and I was always better than him. I was always studying hard dedicating half my day to studies, finding out information from different sources, revising from the text book and making my own notes, answering questions from my understanding. When we had discussions in class, he could hardly find an answer to a any question.
All this just proves that grades really don't determine how good we are at a subject!!
Applied Business exam last year I knew the entire subject. That's not being big headed I literally knew everything there was to know. I got a low D! This year I learn't the mark scheme and just turned up to lessons because the subject is easy and got 81% in the Unit 2 exam. Stupid people moved it down to 79% with UMS so it wasn't an A.

Do we think UMS marking is fair? This business paper got someone in my class moved from 44% down to 36% by the time it was adjusted. That's a lot of marks!
Original post by hardleyouth
I despise exam boards, I despise the system of exams, the costs, the lack of information, the fact all the boards do is look to make profit (obviously) but the fact that creeps into negatively effecting so many peoples lives through education disgusts me. All the errors they make for example!!!

However, I have never believed exams require great knowledge, merely technique.

My personal example is AS Business, last year, I failed the second unit (received a U). I couldn't believe it, so I got a remark, and they made it a few marks into a E(Costing upwards of 40 quid...which I never received back!). So obviously, I applied to resit for the January exam period just gone, however because I decided to concentrate on my other subjects, I did ZERO business work all year, I dropped A2 Business right at the start, and I managed to get a high B?

How the hell is that possibly? When revising like a donkey and attending classes I get a U? And then doing no work and remember nothing I blad a high B? It makes absolutely no sense and further deepens my distrust of the exams system and especially AQA as they bear the brunt of my many negative experiences.

Anyone else feel like this or has experience this too!? :confused:

AQA are non-profit - Edexcel are the only for-profit exam board.
Reply 89
Original post by Zoya Khan
Totally agreed with you!!!!
My classmate crammed all the past exam papers and got all straight A grades. He was PATHETIC at classwork, tests and homework and I was always better than him. I was always studying hard dedicating half my day to studies, finding out information from different sources, revising from the text book and making my own notes, answering questions from my understanding. When we had discussions in class, he could hardly find an answer to a any question.
All this just proves that grades really don't determine how good we are at a subject!!


Just because he didn't try hard in class, doesn't mean he never tried hard in his exam.
Original post by hassi94
It's annoying me that people are saying stiff like blah exam board sucks due to making a mistake. The markers are a bunch of teachers, who are human and amongst marking 100s of papers some of them will make mistakes.

For the vast majority of people who hate these exam boards, they blame it on these rare reasons so they can make themselves feel better about their own shortcomings in exams.

They make mistakes because they are paid piss poor wages so are basically forced to rush through the papers in order to make it worthwile, therefore it is the exam boards' fault.
People are asking what are you going to do about it?
Petition from students.
Petition from teachers.
Experiment to get teachers to do an A Level exam, if they don't get an A there's something wrong.
TSR can arrange protests.
Everyone can send huge amounts of emails to newspapers/exam boards/Government etc

Thoughts?
Original post by Besakt
If you go up a grade you get refunded. It costs exam board to get it remarked if it doesn't go up a grade then why should the exam board have to bear the cost after they have been put through unnecessary hassle?

Examiners are as objective as possible but they are human. They will make mistakes, emotions may be slip through but this is inevitable.

Do you propose a better system where there is absolutely no chance of mistakes occurring?


When computers inevitably rule the world, they'll know what to do..
To be honest I wish I could think of a better system than this but I can't - oral exams maybe where you just say everything you know? I know I for one despise the whole exam system, it's a test of how well you can memorise the specific marking points (for chemistry and biology which I do) and not how much you enjoy and actually read around the subject. I'm just hoping to get the grades I need to get into university where hopefully it'll be less of a system and I can just learn for an education and not for pointless qualifications and a bit of paper with a letter on it. There's just more to life than exams and I wish there was a better system but until we think of one we're stuck with this rubbish one. :frown:
Reply 94
Original post by Americaniamh
However, bearing in mind I'm on OCR and my experiences are limited to this exam board, history in particular requires a mass amount of memorisation and technique. Even source-based papers require a solid level of subject knowledge. I would even argue that history has a subject knowledge requirement akin to that of biology, especially when considering the added need of eloquence in relaying this subject matter.


Don't get me wrong, History is a hard subject. However, my friend does both and the content in History doesn't compare to Biology. On the other hand, History does require technique, but if someone can naturally write better than another person, they instantly have an advantage in that subject. Biology is all about knowing the facts and applying them to questions.

I stress again, this is from my personal experience. I was only responding to the person I quoted who said 'people that do sciences are lucky in that...'. It goes both ways. Subjective markers can be advantageous to people that don't really know what they're talking about but can that pass off with some vague knowledge about the subject.

Anyway, I don't really have any interest in getting into a humanities vs science argument. Both should be respected in different ways.
AQA is so bad, we did some past exam questions for Biology on neurones and the question featured a diagram. This diagram was clearly made by someone who knew nothing about the subject as they had labelled the neurones wrong and we had to correct the diagram. If I had gotten this question in an exam I would have been totally confused by it. Also I think people remember the awful Jan 2010 paper for unit 4...
Reply 96
Original post by Super Mario 64
When computers inevitably rule the world, they'll know what to do..


Do computers never crash?
If you can't come up with a better realistic alternative stop complaining.
Reply 97
Original post by Miracle Day
People are asking what are you going to do about it?
Petition from students.
Petition from teachers.
Experiment to get teachers to do an A Level exam, if they don't get an A there's something wrong.
TSR can arrange protests.
Everyone can send huge amounts of emails to newspapers/exam boards/Government etc

Thoughts?


I like your enthusiasm, but I highly doubt a random thread on a random forum will revolutionise an education system that has been put into place for years.
(edited 12 years ago)
Did anyone also notice good grades are usually dominated by one exam board?

For example, if you go on TSR loads of people may say "I got a U in AQA" and then loads saying "I got an A in WJEC" e.g..
Reply 99
£45 for a remark and £10 for a photocopy of my exam... do they need to fly them around the world within a day to get them to me or something? I know it's been said a few times already but how on earth can they honestly charge that for 1 exam, that is ridiculous. Resits are also slightly too expensive imo.

And exams where I feel as if I do well in, end up with anything between a D-U, and exams I feel I do crap in end up because I haven't revised for them, end up with an A/B. My results have always been so varied that I have always wondered why.

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