It's That Time of Year Again

Yes, once more by public demand (ahem), we here at TPIOT bring you our annual review of the Scottish exams, starting with part one: the Mathematics Standard Grades (Foundation, General, Credit - in increasing order of difficulty) which took place last Thursday in sweaty exam halls and school gyms up and down the country.

So, what's the skinny?

Well, I thought they were all pretty reasonable to be honest. Keen fans of this blog will recall that I was worried last year at the lack of testing of algebraic skills at Credit, and though this does remain an issue, I do think that they managed to produce a better paper overall. Last year's was just too darn easy, which has ultimately done no-one any favours, as a lot of pupils have ended up heading on to Higher this year when really they shouldn't have.

I've spoken with a few teachers at other schools and there are perhaps some concerns that some of the reasoning questions in Credit were a tad obscure, but I'm not sure I agree. It seems to me a pretty pathetic position to be in, when we expect every question in the exam to be one which pupils have seen before.

Meanwhile General and Foundation seemed very decent. I was pleased to see that the amount of reading in the F exam has been cut down, which is a good thing as often the less able pupils are disadvantaged by issues other than their mathematical ability when there is so much waffle going on. (I am happy to predict now, by the way, that we'll eventually be told that the worst done question was in fact the one requiring pupils to draw an angle of 80 degrees... which must have sent invigilators across Scotland scurrying to maths departments in a hurry to get yet more protractors.)

Final point: I couldn't help but notice that quite a few questions in the exams dealt with "real life" situations with a slight environmental or social tinge... that'll be SQA getting in on the "Curriculum for Excellence" jamboree bandwagon bunfight then.

Results, results, results - part one

So, the exam results are now out in Scotland, though I've yet to see any mention of pass rates etc in mathematics. But the papers are covering two "stories": one, the online results service offered by SQA; two, the decrease in the numbers of students studying Advanced Highers.

So, the first one then: yes, indeed, for the first time ever across Scotland, students were given the opportunity a while back to sign up for an online (or text) results service, which meant that they could log on a day early and find out their results (that would be yesterday) before the actual envelope containing the results dropped through the letterbox (that would be today).

Meh.

First up, it's amusing to see that apparently a large number of students couldn't access the results because they had forgotten their passwords, and apparently some parents are complaining about this, like it's the SQA's fault. Ah, parents, how we love thee...

But taking a more serious look at this: this must have cost some money, right? And no university or employer or whatever is ever going to accept a printout of a web-page as evidence of exam results, right? So we can never get rid of the need for the paper copy - the exam transcripts, as I believe they are referred to - right?

(You see where I'm headed?)

So basically this expensive (I'm guessing) results service is pretty bloody pointless and a waste of money - right? I mean I admit it's nice for the students to find out a day early, but it's hardly life or death, is it? Is it honestly worth spending a lot of money on? Is it cynical of me to think that SQA are doing this just because it's a (supposedly) funky sort of use of technology, which must therefore be A Good Thing?

Just how much money has it cost, I wonder?

Higher musings

OK, late again, but better than nothing...

General consensus for this year's Higher Mathematics exam was that it was more or less OK, if a bit... meh. Kids found paper one (no calculators, folks!)** pretty straight forward, whereas paper two was more challenging. My first sight of paper two left me a bit concerned, but I think the questions looked worse than they actually were once you got down to it and gave it a go. But three questions in paper two on logs/exponentials? That's a bit weird.

Mind you, if you're going to make one paper harder than the other, at least they got this the right way round. If I was being picky I'd say paper one was too easy, but I suppose they made up for it later.

There you go.

(** unless of course you are allowed to use a calculator in the non-calculator paper... don't get me started, I'm saving this up for another time)