Animals and Practicals-- should they divorce?

Though the questions were surprisingly easy, I slumped out of my AS Bio practical feeling glum. I had just funded my two greatest anathemas: environmental destruction and animal cruelty. The worst of it was that it could have been avoided so easily.

What are your thoughts on the on the use of animal products in Biology practicals?

Do you think it would be easy for your school to use alternatives?
For example, the exam center used cows milk but I think soya milk would have worked just as well. Even in South Africa, where I live, Soya milk is easily accessible and affordable.
It definitely would react with biuret but, what do you think, would it coagulate with an acid?

Do you think Cambridge (my exam provider) or others, could feasibly provide more environmentally and animal friendly practicals? And, should they make them all animal-product free or offer it as an alternative option to the traditional products?
My opinion is that-- considering the important role they play in educating the population and the efforts they already take to encourage awareness of the fragility of the environment (i.e. in Chemistry I learned about plastic pollution and catalytic converters)-- they should stay true to their words and show the future generations how things should be done.

On another point, I noticed that in numerous past papers there are spare pages at the end. I emailed Cambridge and they claimed it was space for working, however, as it was not present in all papers (even within the same paper type and season) it surely isn't that necessary and can't students always ask for extra pages if needed like in English?
Imagine the amount of paper that is wasted for no good reason... Cambridge doesn't even need to care a smidgen about the environment to recognize that it isn't good to spend money when it isn't necessary!
Do you use that extra paper at the end? What about asking for extra paper during an exam?

Who's FOR starting a petition?

Reply 1

Dysf(x)al

How many spare pages are there? Because of the way they're printed and bound, up to three is unavoidable.

Reply 2

Elizabeth.C

Good point. It seems that the papers have a set length of either 12 or 16 pages and the pages they don't fill are left blank (usually 0 to 3). However, when I emailed them they didn't state that as a reason.

Reply 3

Elizabeth.C

Original post by TheMindGarage

How many spare pages are there? Because of the way they're printed and bound, up to three is unavoidable.

Hi MindGarage

I just printed off a few mark schemes and they had varying lengths ranging from 3 to 7 pages. If mark schemes can be bound like that why can't papers be too?

Reply 4

Dysf(x)al

Original post by Elizabeth.C

Hi MindGarage

I just printed off a few mark schemes and they had varying lengths ranging from 3 to 7 pages. If mark schemes can be bound like that why can't papers be too?

Papers are usually printed on A3 paper with 4 pages to a sheet, so it can be folded into an A4 booklet.
With a mark scheme, being easy to use is not so important (and I think these days markers probably look at an online copy).
Papers are bound in the way they are so that it's quicker to turn the page and you can see two pages at once which can help on longer questions.

Sure, it's slightly wasteful, but there are bigger problems to tackle (*cough* Maths formula books *cough*)

Reply 5

Elizabeth.C

Original post by TheMindGarage

Your reasoning makes perfect sense.
I also noticed the maths formula books: do you happen to know why they don't just give the formulas needed for the specific maths paper at the back or front of the paper like in physics?