TSR Study Together - STEM vs Humanities with Biology Support!

The markschemes for ocr are very unstructured and confusing, im hoping the same kind of points will work tho.

The markschemes for ocr are very unstructured and confusing, im hoping the same kind of points will work tho.

yes i did gcse further maths - very fun
and oooh do you not do maths and further maths alongside each other or does your school do the whole of a level maths and then further maths?

aah yes!!
so evaluation is grouped into 3 main categories

being able to identify what category the evaluate question comes under is key
once youve done that you'll notice the exam mark scheme always has the same evaluation points and all you have to do is substitute the subject for example one question might be about frogs another about mice
examples:

this question comes under the evaluating a method - here's the marksceheme:


another tip always look at the numbers for easy marks- is it representative, reliable in this case putting back 10% is a very low amount. if you use words such as representative/reliable you have to explain so for example
it is not reperesentative as it is unlikely in the fishing world 90% of fish would be removed
reliability - are all variables kept the same - this is a good one you can always mention if the scientists kept all variables the same - think back to you independent, dependent and control variables. depeding on the topic it changes. e.g: photosynthesis = light intensity,
oh and last but NEVER LEAST
always give both sides - doesnt have to be equal but without giveing both sides you cap yourself.
should we go through some qs?
here's the full start of the question:

Never had OCR as an exam board for a subject at GCSE or A-Level.

Thank you for this! This is really useful!

Ah ok - yeah I did the FSMQ additional maths (it’s a bit harder than L2 fm which you did and it’s a bit more focused on AS/A-Level maths whereas your qualification goes into other bits of cool maths). But yeah it was fun for me too!
Whole of A-Level maths then whole of A-Level further maths. Makes so much more sense like that in my opinion… I think it’s mostly done like this because so many people at my school start with FM (more than half that do any A-Level maths and well over a third of the entire year group) - as a substantial number will drop out about now, it’s probably better for them that the A-Level course was covered entirely first!

Ah ok - yeah I did the FSMQ additional maths (it’s a bit harder than L2 fm which you did and it’s a bit more focused on AS/A-Level maths whereas your qualification goes into other bits of cool maths). But yeah it was fun for me too!
Whole of A-Level maths then whole of A-Level further maths. Makes so much more sense like that in my opinion… I think it’s mostly done like this because so many people at my school start with FM (more than half that do any A-Level maths and well over a third of the entire year group) - as a substantial number will drop out about now, it’s probably better for them that the A-Level course was covered entirely first!

yes i acc dropped maths at the end of year 12 - i realised just because you're good at something doesn't mean you need to do it. I'd basically fallen out of love with maths but year 12 was a breeze because i'd done it for gcse so I just sat an AS and called it a day.

What did you do at A-Level?

Never had OCR as an exam board for a subject at GCSE or A-Level.

just did some biology revision and just found out my unit 3 A2 bio exam is in 36 days and I have only been focusing on my AS resit and have completely neglected unit 3 is it still possible to even learn the content and do past papers for my exam in 36 days???

yes i acc dropped maths at the end of year 12 - i realised just because you're good at something doesn't mean you need to do it. I'd basically fallen out of love with maths but year 12 was a breeze because i'd done it for gcse so I just sat an AS and called it a day.

I know loads of people at other schools that do it that way but at my school we do both alongside each other, but the people who are doing FM did IGCSE FM (its a lot of pure and some mechanics of a level maths, its kind of between FSMQ and AQA, closer to FSMQ tho), so basically the only part of maths the FM ppl need to fully learn is stats, most of the time we actually are doing FM questions and practice during maths lessons. At my school, it was a requirement to have done IGCSE FM or FSMQ to do A level FM but now its not required anymore

Yeah AS maths isn't really much of a step up from (even GCSE but moreso) additional maths. Good you dropped it if you never enjoyed it so much - still got half of the qualification eh?
So you do AS FM before A2 Maths? Seems more difficult to me but that's fair enough then.
I'm surprised that some schools are quite loose with their requirements for FM - I've heard that some accept a 7 at GCSE and don't really require additional maths even if they offer it. I've always thought that GCSEs would indicate your compatibility for something like Further Maths but maybe not.

Yeah AS maths isn't really much of a step up from (even GCSE but moreso) additional maths. Good you dropped it if you never enjoyed it so much - still got half of the qualification eh?
So you do AS FM before A2 Maths? Seems more difficult to me but that's fair enough then.
I'm surprised that some schools are quite loose with their requirements for FM - I've heard that some accept a 7 at GCSE and don't really require additional maths even if they offer it. I've always thought that GCSEs would indicate your compatibility for something like Further Maths but maybe not.

Agreed! At my school it was like this for popular subject if you didn't get an 8 in maths you couldn't do further
And if you chose to do combined science you had to get 8-8 minimum to be considered for a place on any A level science

I think my school allowed most people to do additional maths but started to encourage those who weren't set for 9s to drop it and focus on GCSE. They require a 9 in GCSE and the top grade in additional maths if you want to do A-Level Fm 💀 They made exceptions but that's very harsh I think.
And I think the requirement is that you do triple science and get minimum an 8 in the chosen science if you want to do an A-Level science. Unnecessary in my opinion but it is what it is - I doubt it affected anyone though. 8-8 in combined seems reasonable-ish as you say...

My sixth form will let kids do fm with an 8 in gcse and for sciences you need a 7 in the science you want to study and usually a 6 in maths or a second science depending on the science course. I personally think that's a bit low for science cos there's kids in my class who did combined and got 76 but that means they struggle on anything biochem for biology etc