This discussion is now closed.

Check out other Related discussions

(yr 13) Who hates being the guinea pigs for the education boards?

what ever i seem to have done, its always a new spec
the teachers don't know what the exams are going to be like and there are never any past papers, so how do they expect us to prepare ourselves for them? but yeah its annoying, we always seem to be the guinea pig year lol

Reply 21

cardine92

10

woozeybear

New GCSEs...

New A-Levels...

No BCG...

It's like the government is out to eliminate us one way or another..

:wink:

I got the BCG. I had to fight to get the HPV though, they did it for the y13 when I was in y12 then they cut funding :mad:

Reply 22

BlondeNorfolkGirl

It annoys me a bit too. This morning in psychology I was trying to find some revision quizzes etc. on the internet, but a lot of revision websites seem to have not put any of the new stuff on or are still in the process of putting it on. There are several topics in the new syllabus that weren't in the last one and vice versa.

As has already been mentioned, the teachers always seem uncertain about exactly what to teach us! Quite annoying that it's the third year in a row that we've confused teachers, no real past papers etc.

Reply 23

lil_miss_rapunzel

1

cardine92

I got the BCG. I had to fight to get the HPV though, they did it for the y13 when I was in y12 then they cut funding :mad:

I had BCG too, and HPV. It was the year below us that were the first not to have the BCG.

Reply 24

SirMasterKey

18

Not in my school, I never had the BCG.

Also if you look on the bright side, grade boundaries will tend to be lower for the guinea pigs purely because not all the teaching will be up to standard.

Reply 25

SongsOfFreedom

I agree, it's very unfair, two of my three A levels are brand new courses, and so the teachers don't know what they are doing. There is no resources as all the old ones are useless now and both of the new courses are extremely harder then they were previously. I understand that exms need to gradually get harder but it is stupid how much harder they have gotten so quickly.

Reply 26

Mm_Minty

17

It's pretty useless in terms of preparation cause you can ask your teacher any number of questions and they just won't know the answer cause it's all new, so we don't know how harsh the papers are, if they'll be worded simply or with OTT terminology....
other than that I never really notice.
what I was pissed about was being the last year that did GCS maths coursework >:|

Reply 27

MagneticMeteor

10

Edexcel A2 History, From Kaiser to Fuhrer and coursework about Middle East

Absolute disaster. And going rather quickly through 200 pages book about Germany doesnt help but teachers really try to spend as much time as they can on stuff from syllabus.

Reply 28

Aj12

18

I hate it but because we are the first year sitting the exam apprently we get consideration as the teachers do not have a clue

Reply 29

Hippysnake

19

Nasir....:-)

Those of you doing A-levels with new specs and with the A* grades in A2, do you like or dislike being the guinea pigs?
I don't like it because there are no proper past papers for the layout/format of the paper we will get in our exams and the type of questions. Also, the specimen papers are full of mistakes so they are no help either :frown:

Aren't you in Year 12? If so, why are you complaining? You have anywhere from 2/3 past papers to work with while we original guinea pigs had none at all!

Reply 30

hollywoodbudgie

20

Aj12

I hate it but because we are the first year sitting the exam apprently we get consideration as the teachers do not have a clue

That just made my day!

We're special! :woo:

Reply 31

Zoombini

4

yeh i do feel so sorry for you. I relyed on past papers and spotting exam trends sooo much for my revision. Sucks to be you :smile:

Reply 32

ThePants999

14

River85

Those who started school in 1988, so the year above me, were the first to do SATs exams (at 7, 11 and 14), cope with changes in maths exams (non-calc paper if I remember correctly) and were the first to take A-levels under the Curriculam 2000 format (ie. AS/A2 split and taking four subjects) with the massive problems this caused with regard to timetabling and having four exams on a day.

Yup, I was in that year. And it was fine. Changes are not a big deal, folks!

Reply 33

K the Failure

2

SirMasterKey

grade boundaries will tend to be lower for the guinea pigs purely because not all the teaching will be up to standard.

Second this second this.

Reply 34

bananacake14

16

Every single time we have to external exams someone asks "What came up last year?" and the answer always is "Oh it's changed this year."

Reply 35

MathsHamster

10

For the people saying don't complain - we are stressed 18 year-olds, we live to complain! Please don't take that little bit of joy away from us! :p:

I don't mind about having no past papers because we can use the old ones - but it is annoying not knowing whether you're getting the questions wrong because you're thick or because the stuff isn't on the syllabus.

The specimen papers might as well not be there - they are so badly and ambiguously written, obviously done by somebody late at night in about half an hour.

For example, the chemistry F325 paper has loads of questions on the first two chapters of the book, and then the new bit (Transition Metals) is covered by one long essay question at the end, which is very vaguely worded and basically translates as "write down everything you can think of about transition metals". Which of course gives no clues as to what the mark scheme will be looking for, so it's pot luck really. It's obvious somebody's gone "oh, we haven't put in anything about all that new stuff, let's shove a question in at the end".

Other than that, it hasn't gone too badly, but the OCR practical exams last year were a joke - the mark schemes were ridiculous and badly thought through, the questions managed to be vague and pernickety at the same time and the conversions from raw marks to UMS had no logic whatsoever.

Reply 36

crazedmonkey09

2

Jingers

It's better that than being the last year with little chance to retak exams.

^ This
thanks to the sylabus change I feel I have been screwed out of 2 a levels, I was 2 marks of an A in each one. It also annoys me that the new spec sylabus seems to be easier, well for physics at least, there is no practical exams less material to learn and no dreaded synoptic paper which was the reall grade killer exam. Despite this it is possible to get a higher grade :mad:

Reply 37

z_ali

Nasir....:-)

Those of you doing A-levels with new specs and with the A* grades in A2, do you like or dislike being the guinea pigs?
I don't like it because there are no proper past papers for the layout/format of the paper we will get in our exams and the type of questions. Also, the specimen papers are full of mistakes so they are no help either :frown:

Absolutely hate it.
In all 3 subjects we're guinea pigs, biology being the worst!
Even at GCSE when doing core and additional science we were the first ones to do experiments, and how science works, instead of coursework :mad:

Reply 38

Tam_91

1

hollywoodbudgie

21st century science was a JOKE.

It had a flipping cross word in it!
And virtually every question was tick box.

Then we go onto A-level.
Glances at paper:
8 MARK QUESTION?

That's a bit of a leap from crosswords and tick boxes. No wonder so many people have to do retakes!

Crosswords? Lol wtf.

Reply 39

felt_monkey

12

Hippysnake

Aren't you in Year 12? If so, why are you complaining? You have anywhere from 2/3 past papers to work with while we original guinea pigs had none at all!

Ah yes, but we have the glorious specimen papers that are full of mistakes. And as for the year 12 thing, I've seen a lot of 'it's so unfair, we only have 2 past papers to look at!'. Which is a bit rich considering what we get.

(yr 13) Who hates being the guinea pigs for the education boards?

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you