Latest exam question blunder

[strange6]

The latest is an impossible to answer geography question! Too many mistakes like this seem to be occuring within the exam system and it makes me wonder if the UK's past and present poor education system is beginning to catch-up with itself. I feel sorry for the poor students who are put into a situation like this.

 

[DarloRich]

no question is impossible to answer!

 

[flymo]

The question in question. or part of it anyway.

An errant '0' is the cause of the problems it seems.

 

[DarloRich]

therefore you just change the "answer" and no one will ever know.

see i told you it wasnt impossible to answer!

 

[strange6]

therefore yo ujust change the "answer" and no one will ever know.

see i told you it wasnt impossible to answer!

Try doing that with the 5 other questions from this year And I see what you mean with that question. I bet it's a typo on the part of the printer - you don't have to be a geographer to fathom it out

 

[OxtedL]

Is that AQA this time? If it is, it's the same guys who made the infamous new A level syllabus which has been accused of handing AS level to students on a plate, before giving them impossible-to-win A2 papers.

Fun. All this restores your faith in the exam boards...

 

[ainsworth74]

Well I'm just glad I got out of the GCSE/A-Level part of my life when I did, because in just a few years it sounds like everything has gone mightily down hill! Gotta feel sorry for the people taking the exams when the exam boards are making blunders like this.

 

[OxtedL]

Well it's an interesting one...

The majority of people (in a case of the exam boards getting it wrong) will come off absolutely fine, and may even do better, but there are always a few who will lose out by the "equalising process". This looks like a fairly straight cut job though, I imagine they will simply ignore the question?

 

[DarloRich]

Does it ask what an Ox Bow Lake is?

 

[HugePilchard]

I was told in school (not by a geography teacher, mind!) that if you're stuck for the answer in a geography exam, then you can just hedge your bets and put 'potatoes' as the answer.

 

[Hydro]

Does it ask what an Ox Bow Lake is?

Potatoes.

 

[Grimsby town]

I spotted this in the exam. The question is meant 0.05 and actually says 0.5. I just assumed they made the mistake and answered it assuming the current in the deep side of the river the pool was meant to be the fastest current

 

[DarloRich]

An oxbow lake is a U-shaped body of water formed when a wide meander from the main stem of a river is cut off to create a lake.

 

[OxtedL]

I spotted this in the exam. The question is meant 0.05 and actually says 0.5. I just assumed they made the mistake and answered it assuming the current in the deep side of the river the pool was meant to be the fastest current

Is that AQA? AS? In which case, what was your investigation about?

DarloRich, you forgot the terms "river cliff" and "lateral erosion" in your answer...

 

[DarloRich]

Ah - but i didnt want to be to technical. Start with the basics and build form there!

 

[Grimsby town]

Yeh it was AQA AS we did about the river lud near Louth and how it changes from it's source to mouth but we only did a mile of the river and our experiment completly failed so I had to tell a few white lies.

 

[Oswyntail]

An oxbow lake is a U-shaped body of water formed when a wide meander from the main stem of a river is cut off to create a lake.

Sounds like potatoes to me

 

[WestCoast]

That's the third blunder the AQA exam board has made - two AS-level papers (including one I sat) and now a GCSE paper. I think the problem with them is they focus too much on their presentation and image, and don't spend enough time verifying the content of their exams! They are obsessed with useless jargon like "don't infringe the rubric". They can be overly wordy with their questions as well.

They have made some really dodgy papers in the past - I remember taking a biology one at GCSE that was all about the environment - covering a tiny part of the specification. However, they tend to be quite lenient when they set a bad paper. It does vary between subjects though.

Edexcel seem to care less about exam presentation, but they seem to be more strict with grades in essay-based subjects, even if the content is hard. I have only done three exams with them, so I couldn't tell you more. I've heard from a lot of people that OCR seem to ask clear questions.

However, I did AQA GCSE Geography last year - it seemed a lot harder than this year's (new) syllabus apparently the old one had been going since 1989, the coursework investigation took forever and was by far the hardest piece of coursework in GCSEs, for me at least! It actually really tested you. Put the effort in and got an A*, so it was worth it!

 

[OxtedL]

Yeh it was AQA AS we did about the river lud near Louth and how it changes from it's source to mouth but we only did a mile of the river and our experiment completly failed so I had to tell a few white lies.

"White lies" being the definition of Geographical Investigation! I have memories of Settle station and a visit to Malham Tarn in the Dales for a rivers investigation... the choice of location being for no apparent reason other than that the teachers fancied a visit!

 

[Drsatan]

Errors on exam papers aren't just confined to GCSE and A-level exam papers.


At the University of Exeter, where I'm studying at the moment, there were several errors on this years exam papers. On one of the questions on the Contract Law paper, the words 'bought' and 'sold' were swapped and used incorrectly, and the invigilators didn't correct this until 40 minutes into the exam. On one of the Maths papers, one of the questions was apparently so difficult no-one could answer it. One of the Accounting papers gave incorrect figures in a question as well. Basically there were far more errors on exam papers this year than in previous years.

The fact that the University wants to charge 9 grand in tuition fees for each student and yet can't get its house in order is beyond belief. And who else thinks these days that Universities seem to think they're businesses rather than institutions of higher learning. I got a rather smug email from the Vice President of my uni saying that the university was one of Europe's 'fastest growing businesses'. Basically says it all about higher education

 

[Zoe]

And who else thinks these days that Universities seem to think they're businesses rather than institutions of higher learning.

By running a university as a business you are more likely to make money, for example if you attract international students then you will get more money through higher fees. I'm not saying it's a good thing to run it as a business but if making money is the priority then that's how it is done.

 

[Lampshade]

A bit of common sense goes a long way, upon reading the scale it's obvious that it should be 0.05.

 

[ralphchadkirk]

They haven't found anything on my exam papers yet. Touch wood.

 

[bb21]

I'm sorry but I don't get the big hoo-ha about it. It doesn't just affect one person. It affects everyone that sat the exam so there is nothing unfair about it. As long as the exam board notices the mistake and takes this into account when setting the grades threshold, I really can't see the big deal.

Of course someone needs to be responsible for such as elementary error in setting and proof-reading the paper prior to its use, but it really isn't the end of the world.

 

[WestCoast]

I'm sorry but I don't get the big hoo-ha about it. It doesn't just affect one person. It affects everyone that sat the exam so there is nothing unfair about it. As long as the exam board notices the mistake and takes this into account when setting the grades threshold, I really can't see the big deal.

Candidates with a good basic exam technique should be fine as they will not spend too long on one question - that is a very basic thing! If you really can't do it, just move on and come back to it at the end if you have time. That is common sense. If you do that with an impossible question, you will get the grade you deserve.

However some students (and this can include some very smart candidates), waste time worrying about the question and then they don't spend as much time on the other questions, thus impacting on overall performance. This is especially common where the unworkable question was worth more than around 5 marks.

More thorough proof-reading is definitely needed..

 

[90019]

I was told in school (not by a geography teacher, mind!) that if you're stuck for the answer in a geography exam, then you can just hedge your bets and put 'potatoes' as the answer.

I got bored in my Environmental Science exam a couple of weeks back and just wrote "Gravy" as an answer to a question about stream sampling.

 

[strange6]

Candidates with a good basic exam technique should be fine as they will not spend too long on one question - that is a very basic thing! If you really can't do it, just move on and come back to it at the end if you have time. That is common sense. If you do that with an impossible question, you will get the grade you deserve.

However some students (and this can include some very smart candidates), waste time worrying about the question and then they don't spend as much time on the other questions, thus impacting on overall performance. This is especially common where the unworkable question was worth more than around 5 marks.

More thorough proof-reading is definitely needed..

Absolutely 100 percent correct. In fact, if you were a candidate with good exam technique and something like this happened, i would be very pleased with myself because in all probability, I would be given extra credit for something I really didn't deserve

 

[bb21]

Maybe this can be written into next year's instructions:

There might be mistakes built into these questions. If you can spot them and correct the mistakes then you will get bonus marks.

That'll keep 'em on their toes.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

My wife said that six mistakes were mention on the television, but she was unsure over which period of time these occurred.

 

[Nym]

Many a time the University of Manchester have for light of a better term, screwed up the exam papers, twice on the side of the Mathematics Department for their service teaching, and twice on the part of two tutors each. Primeraly because the're researchers, not tutors. And have been pushed into teaching beacuse of budget cuts. Not to sound old, but they never had researchers teaching or MMath students teaching when it was UMIST.