ICT AQA GCSE Written Paper (Unit 1) Exam - Strictness

I am sitting the Information and Communications Technology Unit 1 GCSE (New Specification) examination tomorrow in the afternoon (Unit Code: 45201). Is anyone else sitting this paper? If so, we can use this thread for discussion.

While I haven't bothered revising (beyond my already present knowledge, which covers everything in the syllabus anyway, but none of it ever seems to come up, except for a couple of questions near the end) because the entire examination is basically pure common sense mixed with general knowledge and with a dose of overall rubbish (not to mention the poor wording and questions with either extraordinarily obvious or multiple correct answers). However, for some of the questions which ask you to give extra reasons for certain actions or possibilities, the mark scheme gives rather stringent and poor answers which obviously you would not be able to come up with (because there are dozens of correct and more obvious answers not listed on the mark scheme); in my first mock (which was the 2010 Examination Paper), my teachers (who are, admittedly, lacking in any imagination) marked strictly according to the mark scheme. When about 45 out of the 120 marks are given for questions like this, you can see why it is extremely difficult to gain the full marks. Let me give you an example (from the 2010 paper, the specification of which is fairly similar to the GCSE):

Question 1, Part F:The secretary sends the letter (the exact content of the letter is unimportant for this question) as an e-mail attachment.
Describe two possible security threats to ZoneGem.

Security threat 1: ........................................................................

Security threat 2: ........................................................................

(2 marks)

The mark scheme's answers are:

Question 1, Part F (Mark Scheme):Any reasonable, for example
An e-mail virus might be distributed. Allow ‘virus’
Someone might copy the secretary’s signature and pretend to be the
secretary and attempt to defraud the company
Someone might intercept the e-mail then they would know the SWgold
watch is in stock and could steal it from them

While the e-mail virus is the obvious idea, it is obviously incorrect because the virus would not be a direct security threat to ZoneGem, and, even more obviously, because viruses cannot just be added to an e-mail and then sent off with the pretence of coming from the same address. Although I was able to think of the second idea (that the secretary's signature could be used to defraud them), I put a completely different reason down for the Security Threat 2 (who on Earth would consider the possibility of someone intercepting the e-mail, finding out the watch was in stock (which surely they could find out by sending a simple e-mail themselves?) and then going on to attempt to steal that watch? - this reason is absurd), and so my teachers docked me a mark. This happened on 2 other occasions additionally (wherein I can assure you my reason was not just as good but better than the 2nd one written on the mark scheme, which was little more than different way of phrasing the 1st), leading to me obtaining 117/120. Obviously I'm not disappointed with this mark, but I deserved 120/120 and I was wondering if, in the actual GCSE, the examiners are really unwilling to consider any reasons outside of the mark scheme. The effect was far greater on the majority of people in my class, who I'm completely certain wouldn't make many real mistakes, but who mostly ended up with 80-90/120 (the 2nd highest mark out of my entire year of approximately 100 ICT candidates was only 102/120, which was a barely scraped A*, whereas in reality, about 82 out of the 100 candidates in my year should end up with my A*). After all, the mark scheme does say "Any reasonable" points would be allowed (though this was always a danger with ICT markers).

So, basically, my question is: is the marking always direct and close to the mark scheme, or do the examiners accept "any reasonable" points for the extra reasons questions? Because I would not at all be able to believe that the A* boundary was 101/120 if the marking was as close to the (poorly written) mark scheme as in my mock.

ICT AQA GCSE Written Paper (Unit 1) Exam - Strictness

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you