Are different exam boards for Maths necessary?

I don't do Maths so maybe this is obvious to people that do, but what do all the exam boards offer differently for Maths? They all seem to the Decision stuff, Statistics etc. Are they just 'different' in terms of the difficulty of the questions asked - e.g. Edexcel Maths being "easier"?

Reply 1

Suc-Cesc!!!

I don't think there are 'easier' or 'harder' exam boards. If that was the case, universities would impose stricter offer conditions for some students taking a different exam board. Personally, I think there shouldn't be different exam boards for any subject - but then again, competition is good.

Reply 2

Andy H

They tend to just have the same material but arranged differently within the modules.

Some of the Further Pure stuff is different depending on the board, but ultimately it doesn't make much of a difference :smile:

It's just the same way taht each board will offer Chemistry, Physics, Biology etc with the same overall content but arranged in a different way :smile:

Reply 3

~Kirsty~

I would say for normal maths, the content will be similar. The way the questions are asked may be worded slightly differently between exam boards, but i don't think any are easier or harder than the other.

Reply 4

Excalibur

I don't think exam boards are necessary for any subject, but that's another story.

They do vary slightly; there are some topics that come up in one module that comes up later for another exam board - for example, integration seems to come up in Edexcel C4 but it was C3 with AQA, and trigonometry is in Edexcel C3 but in AQA C4 etc. But the overall content is probably very similar.