Boo Hoo
Exam didn't mimic how students had been coached to get top marks shocker.
(, Tue 12 May 2026, 0:12, Reply)
i was in the first year to do GCSE. We did the top maths paper and after opening the paper after a bit you could hear gasps and crying. It was way more difficult than the practice papers.
Also, 2 blokes sat there for the 90 mins or whatever and could answer virtually nothing. we all came out and said 'what are you doing here?' they would have struggled on the bottom level paper. they just saw some people they knew and followed them in...
In college the exams were in the sports hall, being a double height room the student bar was on the top floor with a window. one bloke gets up and leaves for a break, followed by the bloke who would be "Mr Withit" in Skool Daze. a few minutes later the both of them sit down with a pint at the window and smile at us.came back down after finishing their drinks
(, Tue 12 May 2026, 1:02, Reply)
I was too, the first exam we did was Geography and the first question had a grid reference that wasn't on the map.
Lots of very confused people not knowing what to do...
(
antmulder Flick your icefloss, Tue 12 May 2026, 20:04,
Reply)
So the trained monkeys
didn't see their command words and didn't know what to do because they were learning by rote, and didn't actually understand the subject?
Sounds about right.
I remember for my exams I did almost the polar opposite. I have a terrible memory, but I found a trick which was to understand the basic principles of the subject, then I could use those to figure out the rest of the concepts during the exam. The wording of the question doesn't matter if you understand the subject. Einstein famously said he didn't bother to remember anything he could look up in a book, I assume anything simple enough to figure out from basic principles would be included in that.
I did great in logical subjects like maths and science where that was possible and terrible in memory based subjects like history or geography where the main thing tested was your memory.
(
My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Tue 12 May 2026, 10:52,
Reply)
I doubt you could deduce what a linear factor was if you hadn't been taught the term.
it has a specific intermediate form, and given 'linear' it might be easy to think you were being asked the real roots like the students did, as they are directly related expressions. And applying mathematical techniques to different problems isn't rote learning, though I agree maths teaching in my day was light on first principles, though looking at my daughters it has improved
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 12 May 2026, 14:33,
Reply)
My comment was more on the state of education than the students
If you teach people by rote and get them to repeat homework or an exam until they pass, you just make people who are using memory rather than understanding to pass. This is very fragile, and as soon as you change anything about the test they are like that ant in A Bug's Life who was irrevocably lost when an obstacle was in their path until they were guided round that specific obstacle.
Students are just as feckless now as they were in our day or Plato's. No better, no worse. It's how they were taught in this particular school that failed them IMO. I was in a few schools during my education (father in forces), and they all had quite different teaching methods, I suspect this instilled a more general understanding rather than the sometimes singular focus of any particular school.
(
My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Wed 13 May 2026, 10:50,
Reply)
if it's true that the exam terminology differed significantly from syllabus
than this is a failing, either of teaching or exam setting, as you would expect the exam to be a test of the taught syllabus in mathematics.
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 12 May 2026, 14:15,
Reply)
^this
If you’re testing the pupil’s understanding of how to evaluate partial derivatives and they’re called partial derivatives in the syllabus, then don’t refer to them as fractional functions within the test.
(
wheresthefish Partly filled with wrong, Tue 12 May 2026, 18:12,
Reply)
They needn't worry
The AI that is going to be doing the job they aspired to won't have had a problem.
(, Tue 12 May 2026, 14:38, Reply)
"command words" are a big deal in education these days
They tell you what sort of answer is being requested. They are effectively the instructions on how to answer the question, how long you need to spend on it.
"Explain" needs you to write an essay or proof - its a long form, thorough answer.
"State" needs just a list, or single short sentence.
If you can't imagine why the basic instructions of an exam being different and unfamiliar on the dsy might be stressful, then you're more autistic than me.
Or being a cunt on purpose.
(
Invisible Wizard - 13th Level Scrote, Wed 13 May 2026, 8:23,
Reply)