Stop jumping on the Edexcel bandwagon (maths)

Let's first all be clear, Edexcel cocked up with the maths papers. That is clear. The consensus is that the replacement papers were generally harder. However, the complaints going around represent something quite troubling.

It seems that students nowadays are concerned with nailing every single question, and while that is nice, it seems that both parents and students alike are prepared to support easier exams for this to happen.

If you were to go to Hong Kong, for example, you would see an entirely different level of examination. Some of our students would probably come out of the exam halls in body bags if they had to sit a Hong Kong A level maths paper.

The icing on the cake for me was the comments about edexcel's C3 paper on Mumsnet. I kid you not:

'Apparently a lot of the stuff on this 'replacement paper' wasn't even on the syllabus.'

Spoiler

And do you know who I hold responsible for this? New Labour. Not Edexcel. It was New Labour that watered down our qualifications, and it was them that seemed to believe that everyone must go to university.

How dare you Tony Blair.

Here's a present day Hong Kong maths paper:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/52489790/al-pure-2011

To say the UK's paper is hard is a joke.

Makes a mockery of the league tables for maths stating, how the west are "the best"!

I don't think that it's so much that is was a hard paper that was the problem - it was that it was so much harder than the previous papers. When people go into the exams in Hong Kong, they are expecting a difficult paper. When people go into exams here, they expect a paper of a moderate difficulty, like all of the other papers. Since it wasn't like this, it threw a lot of people completely (myself included) since they weren't able to answer the questions, which completely knocked their confidence and impacted detrimentally on the rest of the paper.

I would actually like harder papers to some extent, especially at GCSE, but I would like some prior warning that it is going to be difficult so that I can make sure to prepare appropriately. I probably should have prepared more anyway, though, so it's my fault really!

I don't think that it's so much that is was a hard paper that was the problem - it was that it was so much harder than the previous papers. When people go into the exams in Hong Kong, they are expecting a difficult paper. When people go into exams here, they expect a paper of a moderate difficulty, like all of the other papers. Since it wasn't like this, it threw a lot of people completely (myself included) since they weren't able to answer the questions, which completely knocked their confidence and impacted detrimentally on the rest of the paper.

I would actually like harder papers to some extent, especially at GCSE, but I would like some prior warning that it is going to be difficult so that I can make sure to prepare appropriately. I probably should have prepared more anyway, though, so it's my fault really!

I might be the odd one out here but that doesn't look any different to the papers we had when I was doing C3, not that I could remember how to answer any of them anymore.

Well I hate to say it but you are wrong, it is of a much higher standard.

Well, can you actually provide some evidence for that..? Because at least the three questions on the Hong Kong paper are all part of the C3 syllabus, or at least were last year.

Here is where you are confounding things.

It does not matter in the slightest that they share syllabus material. The difficulty is in the application of knowledge, and they way the question is asked.

Well, in my experience, the questions asked on that paper are no different to what was asked of me.

I might be the odd one out here but that doesn't look any different to the papers we had when I was doing C3, not that I could remember how to answer any of them anymore.

Well I hate to say it but you are wrong, it is of a much higher standard.

Well, in my experience, the questions asked on that paper are no different to what was asked of me.

Let's first all be clear, Edexcel cocked up with the maths papers. That is clear. The consensus is that the replacement papers were generally harder. However, the complaints going around represent something quite troubling.

It seems that students nowadays are concerned with nailing every single question, and while that is nice, it seems that both parents and students alike are prepared to support easier exams for this to happen.

If you were to go to Hong Kong, for example, you would see an entirely different level of examination. Some of our students would probably come out of the exam halls in body bags if they had to sit a Hong Kong A level maths paper.

The icing on the cake for me was the comments about edexcel's C3 paper on Mumsnet. I kid you not:

'Apparently a lot of the stuff on this 'replacement paper' wasn't even on the syllabus.'

Spoiler

And do you know who I hold responsible for this? New Labour. Not Edexcel. It was New Labour that watered down our qualifications, and it was them that seemed to believe that everyone must go to university.

How dare you Tony Blair.

Question 1 is a simple FP1 question. 2 is a slightly tougher C2 question. And 3 is a completely standard C4 question..

I agree that our papers should be less routine, but this was a very poor example.