Complaint.

Long time, no speak! I think I've been very neglecting of this blog during exam period...

So, I've very nearly finished my exams (Psychology is on Tuesday) which feels equal parts exciting and very, very scary. They started last Monday (four exams in four days = headache) after eight weeks of 'proper' revision... and around 24 weeks of ordinary daily revision (that dates back to January 24th, fact-fans; just after Winter exams had finished).

You might have read in the paper/heard on Mock The Week that students have been  complaining  to exam boards for what they feel have been 'unfair' exam papers... I sat two of these papers and thought I'd voice some student opinions for you.

"Getting an A in Biology cause you're secretly a hedgehog" (Joke courtesy of Facebook complainers)

First exam I sat was Biology, which has provoked an 'enormous' Facebook campaign (considering 18,500 people sat the paper I'd consider 5,000 Facebook 'likes' quite impressive!). Essentially, they felt the paper was 'unfair' because it comprised mainly of extended questions on small parts of the spec, most of which were ecology/farming/environment related. Some of the persuasive arguments against the paper included:

Katie Sparks: "Currently revising lettuce eating sharks in preparation for F214"

Picasso Xantho: "im revisin for f214......LOL JK im watchin springwatch!"

Omar 'Rapid' Hussein: "Ladybirds, hedgehogs, sheep and cabbages ruined my chances of uni! "

Jess Cross: "If the people setting this 'paper' were so concerned about ecology, and therefore most likely to be very eco. , the thing i don't get is why they bothered wasting all that paper and ink on a piece of shit (also known as an A2 exam). clearly a pointless and unenvironmentally friendly process."
Which is mostly just an embarrassment for A Level students. Other more intelligent responses included: 

Sam Salih: "I think this needs to be said for all the idiots who keep slagging us off for moaning that the paper was hard....

WE ARE NOT SAYING IT WAS HARD....

we are saying that a syllabus that spans 65+ topics should at least have an exam that tests a good range of these....
...we are saying that giving us an 11 mark question on something that the textbook explicitly says not to learn is ridiculous
we are saying that testing us with vague, badly worded questions on a teeny tiny fraction of the syllabus is unfair
we are saying that focusing on only one module, and the module which most schools don't teach is unfair
we are saying many many things, and I have only listed some of them.....

but WE ARE NOT SAYING IT WAS HARD" from OCR, which to me says 'We're sorry... well, we're not really sorry'.

 

Personally, I think this is a load of rubbish - (if you don't already know) A Levels are taught around a 'specification'; a set of learning outcomes which students are required to understand in order to pass the exam. At no point does the spec say that these outcomes are proportional to exam material i.e. just because something only takes up a small amount of textbook doesn't mean it'll be a tiny question. In fact, it probably won't be, because the point of A Levels is to test your deeper knowledge and understanding of topics. Essentially, the argument 'it was too focused on ecology/it tested small parts of the spec/it was unrepresentative' is completely unfounded.

 

What was asked was undeniably themed around ecology (most of the hate seems directed towards a question concerning the ethics of hedgehog culling; I like the unintentional irony of this) but at the end of the day, it's been done and there's not a great deal that can be achieved by Facebook bitchin'.

 

If you want to see the Facebook campaign you can click here. You can also read the official statement

 

And there's also some pictorial representations of students' frustration in the form of

 

 

this

 

 

and this

 

 

"That awkward moment when OCR invent 'Magic Tang' to ruin your exams" (Again, courtesy of the hilarious Facebookers)

 

Chemistry seems less disliked (2,711 'haters' liked the Facebook page) than Biology but for a more specific reason.

 

Apparently, there's a new chief examiner who loves setting 'applied' questions - all this really means is that the equations and calculations are set in context, often with very little relevance or effect on the final answer.

 

The question that's being hated on was to do with buffer solutions; now the exam board could've said 'Deduce the concentrations of acid and conjugate base required for a buffer solution of pH 3.55'. Boring, but straightforward enough.

 

Instead, the abridged version was something like 'Sweet manufacturers have decided that a pH of 3.55 is responsible for the 'magic tang' in popular sweets. They want to recreate this in their own products to increase custom. Deduce the concentrations of acid and conjugate base required for a buffer solution of pH 3.55. Comment on whether this pH will confirm the sweet manufacturers assumptions of 'magic tang'

 

See the difference? Apart from one extra marking point it's essentially the same question. Okay, the 'comment...' question made no sense to me either (I wrote: because it might not taste nice?, question mark included) but it isn't really a big part of the exam.

 

Regardless, people hate magic tang as much as they hate hedgehogs as Facebook confirmed:

 

Safiina Kauser: "ii fink all previous exam papers wer wiked... i reali am confused to what happend this yr :("

Zara Wafa: "I think the best thing to have done before this exam was revise the ingredients for toxic waste sweets....hmm"

Hannah Farris: "cya later dentistry.. think i may just snort my woes away with a few lines of magic tang.. "

Ocr Wastemans: "im goinn inn.... i would prefer a magic bang, not some magic tang, when i saw lattice enthaply my pen it sang, but seeing the magic tang thang, the paper was left whiter than the ku klux klan." (Okay, that's definately a piss-take but it's still amusing...)

And then there's just a lot of poor banter and racism. Which isn't great.

 

 

But the really ironic thing is there's not a great deal to complaing about when compared to these students who were set an impossible question in their Maths A Level! I've just got my fingers crossed some Medicine applicants don't get their grades due to lack of 'Magic Tang' revision... and then I can have their place :)