GCSE AQA English Literature Paper 2.

So those of you who have now done the (AQA for me) Paper 2 exam for English Literature should know that you get a set of 15 poems, either in the Love and Relationships or Power and Conflict cluster.

You should have previously been given an anthology (booklet) containing all the poems necessary for the exam which can be used for revision by learning quotations. The exam requires you to compare one (given) poem to another poem (this one from memory).

My school somehow screwed this up and gave every single Year 11 a copy of ALL of the poems, when we were not supposed to. Now some of you may think that this would be great as you wouldn't have to remember all 15 poems, but it is quite the opposite.

I have been learning quotes from these poems and revising over everything for 2 years, only for it to be made redundant by the school's pathetic mistake. Furthermore, they collected these anthologies mid-way through the exam and at the end one of the teachers came in to admit the mistake was on the school's behalf, not the exam board AQA.

They notified us that AQA responded to their email regarding the issue, and said that students should not worry and grades will not be affected.

Later, however, all the parents of the Year 11 students received an email detailing the issue. But here's the problem: the school then say in the email that if students performed better in the poetry section of the exam than the other sections (so An Inspector Calls/Animal Farm and then Unseen Poetry) then they will be marked down for it.

This is extremely annoying as I am naturally better at this poetry section having done several hours of work revising it the days before the exam. The most annoying part is that now- due to the school's stupid mistake- we (the students) are facing the repercussions.

Any advice or comments are appreciated,

Thanks.

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 1

ineeedhellp

Wow how can your school even mess up that bad, surely your head of English knows what the process is or at least a student should have queried this

Reply 2

Roborohan

Original post by ineeedhellp

Wow how can your school even mess up that bad, surely your head of English knows what the process is or at least a student should have queried this

Exactly! I honestly have no idea how they could’ve screwed up this hard considering that they have already run the exam before. And none of the students queried this during the exam as they were either confused (as I was) or knew that they shouldn’t have it and just glad that they didn’t have to remember quotes (which obviously wasn’t a good thing overall).

Reply 3

absolutelysprout

advice? you can't do anything now but wait till results day, the mistake was the school's, not yours.

Reply 4

Roborohan

Yeah Im afraid so. I was thinking about emailing in the school or the exam board but thought this wouldnt make much of a difference as neither could really do anything at this point.Guess Ill just have to wait. Thanks for the reply anyway.