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Edexcel...a pile of...

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
edited March 27 in Work & Study
...dog poop!

I just did unit 6 of A level edexcel geography B, and I am really annoyed. they gave us an overlay in the pre-release pack which did not fit the maps and some maps showed the boudary of the study area as being in a different place to others.

They word questions poorly...they asked a question about greenfield sites on a greenbelt area.

One of my friends does Edexcel history and her teacher has rung up to complain about a badly worded question on one of their papers.

Has anyone else had similar problems? It really annoys me that these exams are so important to the people taking them, but the exam boards seem to keep getting things wrong. Grrrrr :mad:
Post edited by JustV on

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    They made an error on my Government and Politics paper, and my Chemistry unit 3 paper.

    I feel for those people who took that unanswerable maths question last year in the AS.

    Just like the refs in the World Cup, they need to get their act together.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    lol i know this is a bit trivial but on my maths paper there was a question where you were given the numbers to plot on the graph but one of them went off the top the graph went to 50 the number u had to plot was 57
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    they are such a useless exam board!! I don't understand why they haven't been shut down. In january I did unit 4 geography and they simply hadn't given us enough time. It was like 3 units in one as well, and I know I didn't even write enough to get above a D, but I ended up with a B. Obviously am not complaining about that, but they clearly gave us our predicted grades which shows there were major problems.

    Last year when they moderated our geography coursework they marked it all down, some people went down by like 20 marks which affected their grades. They marked me down 3 marks, and I ended up 3 marks off an A...grrrrr. anyway, the school complained, Edexcel remarked them and put most people including me, back to their original higher marks.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah I did the Geography paper on friday. The maps being different scales. Plus the exams was too short. I was still on question 1 after an hour!! Managed to squeeze everything in though in time.

    Also the exam papers always have typing errors in or wrong figures. Just what you need to worry about! My geography coursework was marked down from a D to a U!!! Was not impressed!!! I only just passed because of it. For A level I'm looking to get a C overall with resits and that.

    Got one more EDEXCEL paper on wednesday for Maths D2. God help me!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I thought it was too short on time too, I'd only just done qu 1 and 2a in an hour and I got in a panic!!

    and the last question, on how the BNRR would affect the area...what the hell was that about?! There's not even gonna be a slip road anywhere near. grrrrrrrr.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    All of my A levels are Edexcel! Argh! In one of my biology papers i was asked 2 things which werent in the syllabus, one was in a 12 mark essay which i completely messed up because i hadnt learnt the stuff! Its crazy. I dont know why Edexcel still have a license after all the mistakes they make, year after year!!:mad:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    There was a mistake made by Edexcel on one of the General Studies papers as well - they gave the wrong multiple choice questions and the schools involved had to have the correct choices faxed through and announced to the students during the exam. :mad:

    Although there are a lot of mistakes made, I think it's the same with most exam boards. Edexcel are national rather than regional (e.g. MEG) and so they will cope with more exams and are probably more likely to make mistakes.:(

    Any mistakes they do make are emphasised upon more by the fact that it's Edexcel, the exam board everyone knows makes mistakes. :rolleyes:

    What has been suggested to me as I have taken exams with Edexcel is to ask for photocopies of the exams on results day. It's perfectly legal and will allow me to look at any queries which I can bring up with my teachers. It will also allow me to look at areas I can improve on for next year. I don't know if many schools will offer this opportunity to you, but it can't hurt to ask :)

    Hope this helps :)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've never had any problems with AQA, who I've done the rest of my exams with.

    Good idea about getting the exam papers, but I think that would apply more to people doing AS levels. Hopefully there won't be a "next year" of public examinations for me!!

    I honestly thought, tho, that Edexcel would be really careful not to make mistakes this year, after all the bad press coverage last year.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    If you pay penuts you get monkeys..

    The sad facts of the education system is that some colleges place higher emphasis on other things that they can spend their budget rather than exam boards. Everyone knows that Edexcel are crap, practically every week now, it's committed some cock up, but everyone also knows that colleges only use them because they are cheap.

    My college uses AQA for most of it's exams and there are relatively few problems, although in January, there was a problem with the law papers being marked too harshly by an inexperienced marker, but thankfully with AQA, these mistakes are few and far between.

    My condolences go out to all those who are unfortunate enough to have either sat exams or will be sitting exams with this shambles of an exam board. Adcice for people not yet at college is make sure that they use AQA. In my experience it is Further education colleges that use Edexcel as opposed to Sixth Form Colleges, dunno why this is the case though.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    last year all the AS english papers came back C's and D's and everyone was gutted cos they knew they were capable of A's and B's. they got then remarked....they came back A's and B's
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Thankfully my school has abandoned Edexcel in favour of AQA and OCR. I heard they made one royal fuck up with the maths paper with a problem that was actually impossible to solve!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    they can't even count the number of questions on a specimen maths paper
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah, they screwed up our French oral marks too. Some girl who was told she was going to get an A got an E and nobody in the entire year got an A on that module. Then the school sent them all back to be remarked, but Edexcel were too proud to change a lot of the grades, and our conversation teacher said they were still too low. Oh, and they didn't even bother to send back 3 people's results.

    Did anyone see the Private Eye cartoon? "Edexcel biology. Answer 7 of the following 4 questions. You have 2 1/2 secs. Write on all 3 sides of the paper. 3) Explain the difference between the following parts of the body: a- arse, b- elbow. 6) If you were unable to answer qu3 would you like a job with Edexcel?"

    Pretty much sums it up.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by cornflake girl
    Yeah, they screwed up our French oral marks too. Some girl who was told she was going to get an A got an E and nobody in the entire year got an A on that module. Then the school sent them all back to be remarked, but Edexcel were too proud to change a lot of the grades, and our conversation teacher said they were still too low. Oh, and they didn't even bother to send back 3 people's results.

    So it's not possible that the people did actually get E's, and you'd been taught poorly, which the teachers had tried to cover for by claiming you were A standard and it was Edexcel's fault?

    Just a thought.
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