[deniu3545]

gf

[QwertyG]

Have you seen the January 2011 C2 past paper?

[Jodin]

If my memory serves they began to increase the difficulty somewhat around 2005 after complaints I guess in regards to the OCR papers at least, Edexcel is perhaps the same. I'm pretty sure it levelled out around 2010 though, I wouldn't worry.

[deniu3545]

(Original post by QwertyG)
Have you seen the January 2011 C2 past paper?

yep - fair enough - thats an easier paper! but still.. january 2012!?

[raheem94]

(Original post by matthurry)
Has anyone else noticed this? I feel like may 2012 edexcel S1 and C2 papers will be near impossible!

First of all remember one thing, that impossible is nothing.

I don't think edexcel papers are hard, they are probably easier than other boards.

Though edexcel compensates by setting high grade boundaries, which i think should be low, because high boundaries test accuracy not ability. In my opinion, they need to make there papers tougher but decrease the grade boundaries, so that the paper test ability.

[deniu3545]

(Original post by raheem94)
First of all remember one thing, that impossible is nothing.

I don't think edexcel papers are hard, they are probably easier than other boards.

Though edexcel compensates by setting high grade boundaries, which i think should be low, because high boundaries test accuracy not ability. In my opinion, they need to make there papers tougher but decrease the grade boundaries, so that the paper test ability.

you might be right actually, in january 2011, you needed 87% for an A!

[raheem94]

(Original post by matthurry)
you might be right actually, in january 2011, you needed 87% for an A!

Yes, the grade boundaries aren't a fair reflection of the student's ability.

Tougher papers with lower boundaries will reflect ability more than accuracy.

In jan 2012, the A for FP1 was at 69/75 which if you convert to % is 92%.
The paper was easy but the boundaries weren't fair, though i did fine, just dropped 1 mark and got 97.

[wanderlust.xx]

(Original post by raheem94)
Yes, the grade boundaries aren't a fair reflection of the student's ability.

Tougher papers with lower boundaries will reflect ability more than accuracy.

In jan 2012, the A for FP1 was at 69/75 which if you convert to % is 92%.
The paper was easy but the boundaries weren't fair, though i did fine, just dropped 1 mark and got 97.

The maths A levels themselves are a poor indicator of ability. Someone who gets over 90 in an exam might not necessarily understand what they're doing, they're just rote learning. It's all essentially rote learning with very little theory.

I was one of the students who found maths intrinsically difficult and never understood it. At one point I broke down to tears a week before S1 because I had no idea what was going on. The teachers sucked and so did the books. They told you nothing about why you were doing anything, all you knew was you needed to get an A to get into uni.

The entire system is *******s, but you need to play along with it. Thankfully, university does a much better job at weening out the people who rote learn and the ones that understand the concepts.

[raheem94]

(Original post by wanderlust.xx)
The maths A levels themselves are a poor indicator of ability. Someone who gets over 90 in an exam might not necessarily understand what they're doing, they're just rote learning. It's all essentially rote learning with very little theory.

I was one of the students who found maths intrinsically difficult and never understood it. At one point I broke down to tears a week before S1 because I had no idea what was going on. The teachers sucked and so did the books. They told you nothing about why you were doing anything, all you knew was you needed to get an A to get into uni.

The entire system is *******s, but you need to play along with it. Thankfully, university does a much better job at weening out the people who rote learn and the ones that understand the concepts.

I accept that A-Level are a poor indicator of ability.

Which books did you used to use?

I use the edexcel modular text books, they explain very well.

I do around 1-2 papers for each exam, and concentrate more on learning from the book, rather than doing several years of papers and try to predict questions.

I think there are many flaws, one is the A* concept in edexcel maths. All of the questions they ask are straight forward question, nothing tricky. I think they need to add some AEA type of questions in it, to differentiate between the best candidates, so that the best only get the highest grade.

How is uni maths?