Official Edexcel S3 thread Wednesday 20 May 2015 Morning [6691]

Dear Sir/Madam,

This is a complaint about the level of difficulty of the S3 exam taken on Wednesday 20th May, AM.



Posted from TSR Mobile

Almost all questions had an element which was extremely difficult in comparison to any S3 question before, and they were all in ONE paper. Especially 5d, for many self teaching further maths modules with only the textbook as a resource, it would've been near enough impossible. I certainly wasnt shown anything at all like it in the textbook..


Posted from TSR Mobile

I also self teach from the textbook and although its not in the textbook explicitly, 5d) was definitely doable. Edexcel have started throwing in questions like these (D1 last year) and im guessing they use it as a discriminator. Writing a complaint to Edexcel will be all but fruitless, they will see how hard the paper was when its all been marked, and the grade boundaries (if need be) will be adjusted accordingly

Dear Sir/Madam,

This is a complaint about the level of difficulty of the S3 exam taken on Wednesday 20th May, AM.

Having been more than sufficiently prepared (if I say so myself) by doing every past paper from 2005 onwards as well as all the Solomon's and even two IAL papers, I felt that the S3 paper I took yesterday was completely out of the water in terms of relative difficulty.

It is unfair that so many oddly worded and very difficult questions were all in the same paper. Under timed conditions, I felt as though every question I did knocked me back and hence affected the consecutive question. Whilst I understand that grade inflation does take place and difficulty must be increased year on year, I felt this paper went too far. I achieved 96% in my Mock for Statistics 3 but felt that the paper I took yesterday would have given me around 60%.

This is incredibly unfair. I may not make my University place to study Mathematics because of this one module.

I hence invite you to consider my complaint carefully and seriously and hope you take this response into account when deciding grade boundaries.

Edexcel stands for changing lives through advancing learning, but I fear that this time the changing lives will occur through harsher mediums and for the worse of the welfare of students.

Yours Sincerely,

I sent an email too, fingers crossed guys


Posted from TSR Mobile

I also self teach from the textbook and although its not in the textbook explicitly, 5d) was definitely doable. Edexcel have started throwing in questions like these (D1 last year) and im guessing they use it as a discriminator. Writing a complaint to Edexcel will be all but fruitless, they will see how hard the paper was when its all been marked, and the grade boundaries (if need be) will be adjusted accordingly

You are not really representative of the population doing s3 imo.

Bit of a dick


Posted from TSR Mobile

In which case, well done to you, a better statistician than I am. However, I still feel it wasn't entirely fair, even if it was 'doable'.
For the sake of 5 minutes writing an email, I think I'll go for it thanks.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Dear Sir/Madam,This e-mail concerns the S3 Edexcel exam on the 20th of May 2015.Whilst sitting this exam, I was under the impression that significantly more thought was required in the same period of time as previous S3 papers (including international papers) that did not require such a degree of thought to answer the majority of questions. Whilst I understand the educational value of exams that require such thought, using past Edexcel materials and the Official Pearson S3 textbook, I was not trained to complete such an exam in 1 hour 30. I understand that you may be very busy, but I hope that you may have the time to read my e-mail, and to consider what it entails

This is my e-mail, I feel it's better to go on that path, than to talk about the exam being "unfair", this, in my opinion, is the only valid argument against this exam.

What?

Its on the spec, therefore its fair game. Probably going to get a lot of hate for this, but I'm guessing people are complaining because they actually had to think rather than being spoon-fed answers

I partially agree. I think the annoyance though is not over the difficulty per se, but the unexpected difficulty. I'm fine with a super hard S3 paper, if it occurs every year and I can prepare and practise for it. But, a hugely different difficulty is not really fair game IMO.

I partially agree. I think the annoyance though is not over the difficulty per se, but the unexpected difficulty. I'm fine with a super hard S3 paper, if it occurs every year and I can prepare and practise for it. But, a hugely different difficulty is not really fair game IMO.

Yes exactly. I'm extremely offended when people say 'you didn't what to think' because I have an offer from Oxford to study Maths and I love hard papers, the challenge excites me but springing a randomly hard paper under timed conditions with no sufficient practise materials to prepare for it seems really unfair. At the end of the day, we have university offers to meet so papers like these really do affect our lives.



Posted from TSR Mobile

This. The emails are mainly to communicate how difficult it actually was !comparatively!, nobody's trying to formulate a winding up petition for edexcel or anything of the sort lmao.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Exactly, exactly. I mean, they could REALLY make us think, by putting all S4 questions in there instead! But, of course, that wouldn't be fair.