Were AS exams really difficult this year?

I don't know if it's just me and my sixth form, but it seems people have reacted to the AS exams this year for both new and old spec subjects much worse than in previous years. In my History AS class, only 2 out of 17 or so students got an A. I don't know anyone who got straight A's. And people who were expecting to get really high grades got terrible grades, E's and the like.

What do you think? I think the AS exams were much trickier this year based on general results.

Reply 1

Turtlebunny

17

In terms of the grades and the proportion of all students getting each grade nothing should change really. They say that if you can get an A on the old spec exams then you can get an A on the newer ones.

I found our AQA Chemistry papers really difficult and thats because they were, they had historically low boundaries of 64% for an A. OCR Physics was standard boundaries but I found the exams to be quite time consuming, I only finished with seconds to spare - the fact that these are linear exams are putting a lot of pressure on me.

Reply 2

username2752874

22

Original post by Abstract_Prism

I don't know if it's just me and my sixth form, but it seems people have reacted to the AS exams this year for both new and old spec subjects much worse than in previous years. In my History AS class, only 2 out of 17 or so students got an A. I don't know anyone who got straight A's. And people who were expecting to get really high grades got terrible grades, E's and the like.

What do you think? I think the AS exams were much trickier this year based on general results.

Proportion of people achieving each grade stayed the same, so even if they were more difficult, people essentially got what they deserved as a result of the adjustment of grade boundaries. Moreover, I think social media has become more widespread with regards to exams over the years and now allows for critical opinions to be carried around more easily.