Okay, NOW I believe exams are getting easier

Having read my sister's revision guides for 21st century science and seen the format of a past paper, I think the changes that have been made to GCSE science are pretty appalling.

First of all, the syllabus. A lot has been left out that the old Double Award and Separate Science GCSE courses included (remember that 21st century is worth 2 GCSEs).

Quite important (in my opinion) things that have been left out -
Chemistry - The Haber process (and the things that go along with it, such as dynamic equilibrium and learning the process, catalyst etc), production of Sulphuric acid, activation energy graphs and calculations, fractional distillation & there is a minimal amount about titration and acids/bases. There's probably more that I'm missing.
Physics - Half-life, red shift etc
Biology - Proper explanation of evolution + alleles, hardly any detail about genetic diseases... there was an actual title to one section that said "Human evolution through natural selection may not be true". What.

Plus a couple of things have been added which are basically about teaching 14-15 year olds that they should have their own opinions on this stuff. No! At 14/15 you're learning basic science. No opinions, please.

Now, the format the of papers... they look more like SATs papers.

Here's an example from January 2007

http://www.ocr.org.uk/Data/publications/past_papers_2007_january/GCSE_Twenty_First_Century_ScienceA_Question_Paper_A211_02_Jan07.pdf

Question 8b(i) does not belong on any kind of secondary school test.

How are people taking this GCSE ever going to be prepared for A level sciences?

I'm doing OCR separate sciences.
You have to tick boxes and fill in the gaps in the exams. They really are easy. You have to get more than 90% for an A* but I got A*s for my modules last year.
Our whole school's doing the twenty first century sciences but only my class are doing separate. Even the teachers are saying we are going to be in no position to do A-level sciences which is fine by me as I have no inclination to take any of them but for the people that do . . well best of luck to them. I don't think our school will be doing OCR twenty first century science much longer. At least I hope not for everyone else's sakes.
and Samantha, unfortunately I am pretty certain that that will be the higher paper. It looks very similar to a mock exam I took last year before our school got the specification papers for the separate ones, which aren't that different.

haha ok then though it still seems too easy becuase some of it is common sense

Is this OCR 21st Century Science not the same style of specification as AQA's Core Science? If so, on AQA, you can do Additional Science, and Further Science, which have a much higher science based content than Core Science.

The specification I'm talking about is Core Science + Additional Science.

This is quite shocking to me...
The OCR papers are easy as I've read through.
I'm doing single science which means I can choose to do either 1, 2 or all 3 science (is this strange?)
and I only chose Biology and Chemistry
its IGCSE from Cambridge and I can tell it's not as easy as it sounds ><
Anyways, the mocks are coming up so good luck to all of you!

There is a lot to cover.. The syllabus of the separated ones are in more dept I believe.
Do you know what are the differences between edexcel and cambridge IGCSE science?

I wonder why you get to do so many subjects for your IGCSEs (11) while I only have 9? >.<
I'm in set 2 English so I don't get to do English Literature >.< (not good enough lol)