>Exam students will not have to memorise formulae and equations for some GCSE subjects next year
So it will be just like every real world situation in the modern world…
How about helping the students that missed pretty much two whole years and are now struggling to just pass Math and English! Does this mean the college students sitting their GCSES exams for the third time get the formulae sheets?
Why not get rid of gcses altogether and teach kids how to cook and start a business and be safe online etc
At 35 ive got huge use out of trigonometry…
I’ve been invigilating exams for over 20 years. Have always had formula sheets in maths and science exams. ALWAYS.
Physics teacher here. Students were given all the formula for exams up until the 9-1 reforms in 2018.
Now students are given a small number of formula (about 7 out of 28) in papers – the rest they have memorise. For the first few questions they might be given a couple – but they have no idea which.
It generally hampers lower ability students much more, as you can’t get any marks for a 3 mark question if you don’t learn the formula; gatekeeping the important maths skills, substitution, physical understanding and manipulation of the formula behind (pointless) rote learning.
I’m all for giving the students all the formula and testing their ability to use them, rather than memorise them.
At A level all the formula are given (including the GCSE ones), which adds further absurdity to the change.
Hopefully this will pave the way for this to be a permanent change for the better.
As someone in year 11, I do appreciate this as it gives us a better chance in exams
I don’t get it, as a student the only thing I got affected was science in year 9. Everything else hasn’t been changed a bit, it’s only biology, physics and chemistry that was held back. Do people care about maths or history if what we learnt back then didn’t apply to the gcses?
7 comments
>Exam students will not have to memorise formulae and equations for some GCSE subjects next year
So it will be just like every real world situation in the modern world…
How about helping the students that missed pretty much two whole years and are now struggling to just pass Math and English! Does this mean the college students sitting their GCSES exams for the third time get the formulae sheets?
Why not get rid of gcses altogether and teach kids how to cook and start a business and be safe online etc
At 35 ive got huge use out of trigonometry…
I’ve been invigilating exams for over 20 years. Have always had formula sheets in maths and science exams. ALWAYS.
Physics teacher here. Students were given all the formula for exams up until the 9-1 reforms in 2018.
Now students are given a small number of formula (about 7 out of 28) in papers – the rest they have memorise. For the first few questions they might be given a couple – but they have no idea which.
It generally hampers lower ability students much more, as you can’t get any marks for a 3 mark question if you don’t learn the formula; gatekeeping the important maths skills, substitution, physical understanding and manipulation of the formula behind (pointless) rote learning.
I’m all for giving the students all the formula and testing their ability to use them, rather than memorise them.
At A level all the formula are given (including the GCSE ones), which adds further absurdity to the change.
Hopefully this will pave the way for this to be a permanent change for the better.
As someone in year 11, I do appreciate this as it gives us a better chance in exams
I don’t get it, as a student the only thing I got affected was science in year 9. Everything else hasn’t been changed a bit, it’s only biology, physics and chemistry that was held back. Do people care about maths or history if what we learnt back then didn’t apply to the gcses?