27 Aug
Posted by: Harrison Gresham in: Education Advices
Problems with the papers date back to 2008, when the watchdog told examiners to create new versions of the course to be taught in 2011, with the current exams to be made more difficult in the intervening period.
Earlier this summer Ofqual rejected the 36 new science GCSEs drawn up by exam boards because the courses were still too easy.
The regulator believes questions should be made more difficult and that “disparities” in standards between Edexcel, AQA and OCR, England’s three exam boards, must be eliminated.
It said this year’s papers failed to address the existing problems with the qualification, but admitted there had been some progress since last summer, when questions included “Which of these is bigger than our galaxy – the Universe, the asteroids, the Moon or the Sun?”.
Last year students were also required to clarify whether tobacco is a legal drug, an illegal drug or a prescription drug, and whether beer is produced through the process of fermentation, desalination, ignition or combustion. <