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Exam boards

Which exam board is the best for the following subjects:

Math
English
Arts (Art, Drama, Music)
Sciences
Design & Technology
IT
Computing
Humanities (Geography, History, Psycology, Sociology)

Reply 1

~Sam~

15

trev1122

Which exam board is the best for the following subjects:

Math
English
Arts (Art, Drama, Music)
Sciences
Design & Technology
IT
Computing
Humanities (Geography, History, Psycology, Sociology)

GCSE or A level? I like OCR, especially for GCSE history and science

OP

GCSE and A-level.

That's an incredibly vague question. "Best" in what way? Easiest? Most challenging? Most reputable?

Reply 4

trev

OP

15

Best, challenging, and reputable.

Reply 5

Squishy

11

In terms of reputation, anything but Edexcel basically, which has been rather shitted on in the past few years, what with all the stolen papers and poor marking going on. I don't know much of the international reputations of the boards, since I doubt any ordinary foreigner would know any of them. However, since OCR has the Oxbridge tag on it, I suppose that would give it an advantage in terms of recognition.

If you want to know how difficult the various boards are, I'd download a couple of papers from their sites and compare them. I've done that with the subjects I take, and there are some minor variations in the way they assess material, but nothing too major.

Reply 6

Alexander

12

There isn't (or at least there shouldn't be!) really any difference in reputation for the quality/difficulty/depth of the syllabus/examination.

Reply 7

trev

OP

15

I agree with you Alexander. In my school ICT and Science subjects are usually in the OCR board. Humanities are usually with the AQA board and sometimes the Edexcel.

Reply 8

tis_me_lord

14

OCR is my favourite, but only because that's what all my exams were, and i got a lot of questions that were good for me.

Reply 9

waiting2smile

2

tis_me_lord

OCR is my favourite, but only because that's what all my exams were, and i got a lot of questions that were good for me.

No way OCR are evil. They're awful for Biology A Level and Maths as well according to many, in terms of the unnecessarily difficult questions they set anyway.

Reply 10

tis_me_lord

14

Well i only did GCSE which is piss. :biggrin:

Reply 11

Hawk

1

trev1122

Best, challenging, and reputable.

Most challenging is definitly CCEA, compared to all other papers I have taken CCEA have been the hardest by far.

Most reputable is really irrelevant, no university cares which exam board your grade is from, its the grade itself which is important.
But every exam board has their own reputation - edxcel for messing up :tongue:

, or CCEA for being so hard.

Reply 12

jonas123

1

OCR definately set some challenging questions. I believe they are the most reputable too but thats a matter of opinion. Content wise, i'm sure that most boards are pretty similar.

Reply 13

meepmeep

AQA are nice enough to put past papers and mark schemes up on their website, a priveledge that Edexcel and OCR make you pay for.

Reply 14

Leekey

9

I believe that the difficulty of exams set by all boards is monitored to ensure consistency and the z-tranformation that all raw results go through removes and any possible bias within boards. Basically the only difference there may be is in subject content and student service standards , it is therefore not really worth arguing about the difficultly of individual boards. :smile:

Reply 15

username9816

14

IMO AQA are the best exam board for several reasons:

1.) Good marking of exam papers
2.) Excellent website with loads of past papers and mark schemes for virtually every possible subject, over the last 3/4 years.
3.) Fair exams, no shockers or extra tough ones as with Edexhell.

BTW: It doesn't make a difference which exam board you do in terms of uni applications, lol.

"He did Maths on AQA and not OCR, we should accept him instead" - LOL, doubt it. :wink:

Reply 16

MrJ

2

QCA (The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority) monitor all exams to ensure that standards are the same for each. They look at exam papers prior to them being published and compare common exams to check that they are the same. Therefore in theory all exam boards should be setting questions of a similar standard. One problem may occur with the quality of marker who examines the papers. However there are procedures in place to ensure all examiners are marking to the correct standard.

regards
Mr J

Reply 17

username9816

14

MrJ

QCA (The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority) monitor all exams to ensure that standards are the same for each. They look at exam papers prior to them being published and compare common exams to check that they are the same. Therefore in theory all exam boards should be setting questions of a similar standard. One problem may occur with the quality of marker who examines the papers. However there are procedures in place to ensure all examiners are marking to the correct standard.

regards
Mr J

So why is AQA Maths easier than Edexcel then?