My complaint email to OCR about Biology F215 June 2012

No I'm not.

I'm saying it is normal for exam boards to recycle questions. Sometimes they don't rearrange the words other times they do almost all the time the marking points remain the same.

Edit your OP and mention this link asking people to email BBC as well It works better and is more likely to have an effect if more people do it.

I didn't take any of these exams but I think the OP is absolutely right. Exams are about knowledge, not about taking past papers. Particularly for science exams, there is an impetus on the exam board to present questions testing the candidates' knowledge, not their preparation.



Why should past papers be a necessary part of revision? The board is testing knowledge in their specification; nowhere under the AOs for their specification does it list "preparation using past material". I could know all there is to know about the subject, but if I walked into a hall to face a paper which some other students already knew the answers to, I would still be disadvantaged. The OP cannot be condemned for neglecting past papers; maybe he did one and concluded that his technique was fine after that? I personally only assume that past papers will help my technique, and would be absolutely stunned if I heard that I could use a past paper to literally memorize answers for my exam itself.



As I said above, "you put yourself at a disadvantage by not looking at the past paper" just doesn't work. The exam board has said that they test "knowledge" and "understanding", and thus it is not acceptable for them to be testing the recall of certain students and the understanding of others. Like I said above, if the exam tests knowledge rather than preparation (which OCR, in their specification, does) it cannot possibly have marks awarded for having done past papers.

Also, they don't get to make a fool of some students just because they're the exam board. They're still answerable to the UK Government, who should definitely make sure something is done about this, since it seems to happen periodically with OCR.



Choose new material, then! That's what specification changes are for.



As I've already said, OCR claims to be testing knowledge, so why do students who have prepared less (rather than those who know less) have a disadvantage?

so you expect people to go out and buy every revision guide out there? yea thats so realistic.
your just so narrow minded that you dont understand the problem. the issue is not how much people revised. the issue is that OCR should not have done that. you just dont understand.

You'd actually say 'Sorry for bothering you', in a letter of complaint? A letter of complaint is to make your views heard, not apologise for something you feel strongly about, which is why you have complained in the first place.

This shows your age, as well as your obvious lack of self esteem and confidence. You're probably 13 and always do what everybody else says without question, because they just have to be right. Nobody in authority can ever be wrong.

No I expect people to go out and use all the free resources such as legacy past papers to the best of their ability.

Every exam board and almost all if not all subjects recycle questions. You seem to be acting like it's the first time something like this has occurred.

you are completely right. no one can argue with what you have said. the people who keep repeating that its out fault for not doing all the past papers are just stupid and do not understand the actual concept of the situation. even if everyone who took this exam had seen the paper before it still would not make it right.
people who do not understand this are just childish,narrow minded people who just like argueing even though they have no valid point. im sorry, i dont ussually call people names, its just that everyone keeps repeating the same about thing "doing more past papers" when they actually do not know what they are talking about.

did you sit the paper?

It's normal for them to recycle questions, but not 11 marks worth of identical questions in a single paper exactly as it previously appeared.

Does it matter?

Do you have to sit the paper to have an opinion on it?

thats cheating you mean that the teachers might have saw the paper and told their students i go to a private school but my bio teacher did not say anything?

No I expect people to go out and use all the free resources such as legacy past papers to the best of their ability.

Every exam board and almost all if not all subjects recycle questions. You seem to be acting like it's the first time something like this has occurred.

I actually know of someone that goes to a private school and that paper was specifically picked to be revised before the exam knowing that it was the same question.

I actually know of someone that goes to a private school and that paper was specifically picked to be revised before the exam knowing that it was the same question.

I actually know of someone that goes to a private school and that paper was specifically picked to be revised before the exam knowing that it was the same question.

your remark about exam boards recycling questions all the time clearly shows you do not know what you are talking about and therefore any point you make is invalid.
if you had seen the paper then you would not have made that remark because what you have in mind as recyling questions is clearly different to what has happened here.
so please give your opinions on something you actually know what your talking about.

and the last time something like this happened was on a GCSE english paper and it was all over the news. so clearly this sort of thing does not happen all the time.

So how many marks would make it okay?

Just did it, thanks

Can you tell us the name of this school?