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Does anyone else feel like the specimen papers are a bit off?

Today we just finished sitting and marking paper 1 from the second set of specimen papers. For starters, I thought the first set was pretty strange aswell. Something about the mark scheme seemed oddly specific and some of the answers in the mark scheme were flat out wrong. After the one today I was surprised to see some of the same sort of marking. Usually when I do a past paper, I can make use of my wrong answers to teach myself what the right answer is but these papers feel completely different. I got 47/70, which isn't great I know, but it while I could find some value in those lost marks about 10/11 of them felt like they were just unrealistic. For example, a four mark question on the power of a turbine propelling water, which no one in the physics department could even understand, Even the teachers are clueless, not to mention the unit answer was MW instead of W, which felt like something no one would possibly get.

I'm not sure if this is just me whining because I got a mark lower than what I wanted, So I'm sort of interested in seeing what everyone else thinks of these papers. I'm aware they aren't at the same standard as real papers but I'm questioning whether I should actually value them as revision material.

Being the first on a new spec sucks. :/

Reply 1

username2355189

I've always had that feeling with specimen papers too, they're a bit dodge in my opinion, not like the real thing.

Reply 2

jessyjellytot14

Omg I found the exact same thing with the physics one! The wording of the questions is so off-putting and the mark scheme doesn't explain anything or allow for compromise.

Reply 3

Kaedra

One of my teachers used to be an examiner and he said that mark schemes for actual exams are often updated as examiners find new answers to the questions that students have used, so that could be why.