but they made it to a point where doing past papers gets me no where.
I have done all the past papers from 2009 to 2017 for physics, and honestly, they were 5 times easier than this years papers.
Well to be fair the new harder specs were brought in for both GCSE and A level, to make it harder to do well, and to stop as many people getting 100 UMS just from doing every single past paper there was. Which has worked. And personally I think it should be that way, otherwise exams are just mostly a matter of how many past papers you do, and not so much of how well you can solve a problem and apply existing knowledge to new situations. But doesn't really matter anyway whether or not a paper is hard, because the grade boundaries will be appropriately lower.
ah good luck dude/dudette. Probably recommend you to not rely too much on past papers but you never know.
Why should you be able to? I think it's a good thing that your ability to think is tested and stretched, rather than relying on having done very similar questions before. Obviously students would never appreciate harder examinations, but you can see it from the exam board's perspective.
A problem I have with hard exams are the pass mark requirements when they're stupidly low. I feel like they should at-least have an easier start to not let the lower end of the grade-boundaries be that low and to give weaker candidates a chance to not feel like they've failed miserably immediately after the exam has taken place.
A problem I have with hard exams are the pass mark requirements when they're stupidly low. I feel like they should at-least have an easier start to not let the lower end of the grade-boundaries be that low and to give weaker candidates a chance to not feel like they've failed miserably immediately after the exam has taken place.
But then the alternative is giving them false confidence, just to discover that their quite high mark was just short of a passing grade. You really can't win in that respect.
But then the alternative is giving them false confidence, just to discover that their quite high mark was just short of a passing grade. You really can't win in that respect.
I was more-so thinking about 'the middle' as the rest of the paper being difficult. Although then again the perception of difficuty would vary from person-to-person so I guess you're right in that sense.