What is your exam board for the new(ish) Science course?

OCR ticking boxes and deciding whether to write A, B, C, or sometimes even D, the way forward.
Mind you I can see that if you actually liked science you would hate the course.

Reply 2

xxbeckykinsxx

^^^ Ditto.

its good for me, because i have always been really bad at science so for me, science gcse isnt as horrific as i was expecting it to be.

Reply 3

quintsy

17

I think my school does AQA for the new syllabus, but it might be mainly because we did the old syllabus with them too- so the topics were more likely to link slightly, making it a little easier to teach the new units.

I'm shocked you get multiple choice questions though, I couldn't even imagine having them in our papers. :p:

Reply 4

Yeah, our exams are marked by a computer. It's not a case of one multiple choice question. It's almost all multiple choice or fill in the blank at the most.

Reply 5

xxbeckykinsxx

Yehh the exam i done yesterday had a lot of "fill in the blanks" and multi-choice questions :smile:

Reply 6

AnythingButChardonnay

OP

For edexcel Science it was 60% multiple choice (2 physics, 2 chemistry, 2 biology multiple choice), 30% Internal Assesment Activities (1 phys, 1 chem, 1 bio) and 10% practical skills (doing an experiment).

For edexcel Additional Science I think we're doing only 30% multiple choice, 30% Internal assesments, 30% external written papers(!), and 10% practical skills.

Reply 7

Chew

1

Do different schools in England do different exams? I didn't know that lol.

Up here we just have the SQA (Scottish Qualifications Authority) and they make all the exams and everyone sits the same one.

Reply 8

AnythingButChardonnay

OP

Scotland has a completely different system to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland does the 'Standard Grade' in place of the GCSE, I think.

Reply 9

Well if we're going to be specific, I have 3 exams, the first which I've done was 16.7% of my final mark and multiple choice. The second will be the same. The third is an "ideas in context" paper which I think is something like 33.3 % but I don't really know what the exam is :/. Then we have a case study, 20% and a data analysis, 12.5%. As I'm doing separate sciences I have all this times 3.

Reply 10

quintsy

17

You have papers which are predominantly/wholly multiple choice or gapfilling based?! Aughhh and to think, in my year they put in an absurd amount of vague essay questions in our papers supposedly to test out your new syllabus.. :p:

Reply 11

Nimbus

12

sorry to be slightly off topic but which exam board is the hardest for science? is it really OCR? o__O?
And I think WJEC science modules are really..simple like, because you just need to sit there for 45mins!XD

Reply 12

Chew

1

AnythingButChardonnay

Scotland has a completely different system to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland does the 'Standard Grade' in place of the GCSE, I think.

Yea I know we have different (better :p:

) exams. I just wondered why not everyone sits the same exam, thats not very fair is it? Especially when some of you say you get an easier exam.

Reply 13

AnythingButChardonnay

OP

Chew

Yea I know we have different (better :p:

) exams. I just wondered why not everyone sits the same exam, thats not very fair is it? Especially when some of you say you get an easier exam.

Oh, well, rival exam boards.

I suppose it isn't very fair really. For example Edexcel maths is seen as much easier than AQA or OCR. As a result edexcel is by far the most popular board for schools for maths.

But I think having competing exam boards does have its advantages too. Can't think of any off the top of my head... but I'm sure there are some!

Reply 14

Chew

1

I think one of the most important things about assesments is that everyone gets the same one. So that if I get an A, its the same as anyone else's A. With everyone sitting different assesments I would say that its not a fair assesment. Grades only mean something if everyone had to do the same thing to get them.

Reply 15

Interchange

yg110uk

sorry to be slightly off topic but which exam board is the hardest for science? is it really OCR? o__O?
And I think WJEC science modules are really..simple like, because you just need to sit there for 45mins!XD

Yeah I agree. I have physics 1 and 2 on Monday. I did last years paper and its quite insulting lol.

'Turn to page two and select a formula' (1)

Reply 16