National 5 maths was brutal

Going by the solutions online, I would say I got 37/40-40/40 for Paper 1. About 45/50-49/50 for Paper 2.

I got 18 in Paper 1 and 44 in Paper 2. That's 69% but I'm sure will move the bands down. Damn that paper was hard, almost started crying myself.

So how did you guys do in paper 1 ? I got 15/40 trying to remember the answers I put haha. I was being nice to myself aswell . OH DEAR

Where are the online solutions?

I think I've done not bad tbh considering the paper was more difficult than previous papers, I estimate somewhere between 75-82 out of 90

Why was it made so difficult this year? I'm no mathematician but I managed an A two years ago so really not excessively difficult for our year.

Why out of 90? I mean from where are the other 10%. Sorry if dumb question, but I am not familiar since I live here from an year.

Maths is out of 90. 40 marks for non calculator. 50 marks for calculator.

http://imgur.com/KBvQBZh
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http://imgur.com/5zlbs6s
http://imgur.com/V24YnSL - question 1

Looking at the paper. Everything was national 5 standard. However, the marks allocated for certain questions such as question 7b.. Was shocking.
I honestly believe a candidate should be atleast given 5 marks for the working. Using A^2=B^2 + C^2 twice, and in a unfamiliar context... Plus, you required a decent knowledge of vectors. Maybe 6 marks may have actually justified that question. Question 3a was put in far to early, and should have been nearer the end of the paper.

Basically, the mark allocation for certain questions is ****. Looks like the SQA have failed again in providing a proper examination, which tests candidates fairly.

Anyway, those are my solutions to paper 1.

Does anybody have a copy of the papers? The higher paper was pretty good this year (to avoid the same scandal as last year) and I'm just curious after seeing lots of people concerned about paper 1.

I have already seen some people taking about tanx, sinx & cosx in an equation. These are trig identities and are indeed part of the N5 course, however because it doesn't come up that often (at N5, Int 2, or Std Grade) and because they only make up a couple of marks, teachers that run out of time or that prefer to spend more time on revision simply miss it out, so take it up with them, not the SQA.

I'm concerned that some of the main issues students are having is the order in which these questions are asked. I don't see how that makes a difference, the knowledge required is often the exact same no matter where asked. Indeed higher paper 2 this year had an optisimisation question in the middle, rather than at the end as seen in other papers.

Also, anybody that says that it was harder than the 2015 paper, of course it is because those papers were easy as f*** compared to what it should've been.

And of course, as I seem to be saying in almost every damn thread in this forum right now, the grade boundaries are adjusted every year according to the marks students get and feedback from markers. If the paper was deemed too hard then the boundaries will be lowered automatically - without the need for a petition, because that's not how the SQA works. Your teacher should tell you this too.

Well done if you made it to the end of this, appreciate it

Thanks for your answers, I'm guessing you were the one looking for the paper earlier because you're doing higher? What do you think of Nat 5 Paper 1 are people making too much of a fuss or do you think its drastic difference of what you had last year ? I sat the exam today and I'm not going to lie I found the previous paper 1s a lot easier, I have estimated my marks and think I may have about in the mid 20s /40, and for an exam of that difficulty in exam conditions, I think that's pretty good. I do think the SQA will look at all the results as a whole and lower grade boundaries.

Yeah, I agree with you, looking back the paper was not as hard as I had originally thought when sitting it but I found somethings quite difficult, for example the last question was worded in a way that put me off from the start. The question about the sector I found pretty difficult trying to get the final answer which I failed at, do you think they will give you a mark for the formula and substituting the numbers in? Also in the heat of the moment, I completely mucked up the coordinate Pythagoras question, which is 4 marks altogether. Hopefully, I did enough in Paper 2 to recover from what I did in paper 1. For the paper itself and answers go to https://twitter.com/SumTeacherWeb

I do understand what you mean about how 2015 paper 1 was easy but I still don't understand why the SQA decided to change the difficulty so significantly, It's not the order of the questions I'm annoyed about it's that a good section of the course that we studied wasn't included, and they were mostly Paper 1 type questions.

Well it's seems like someone didn't like this teacher putting the solutions up because they're not there anymore, his websites been taken down and there's nothing on his Facebook. Don't see why, all of the candidates have seen it now I don't see what the harm is really.