It's also nearly time for the recently emergent lazy journalistic trend of trawling twitter for students decrying particular exam papers. Now, don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no quarrel with those who have been in a stressful exam hall venting their frustration on the internet - that seems to be the modern day equivalent sitting down with your mates and consoling each other - but I do, however, think that upgrading this to actual news is utterly ridiculous.
It all started in 2015 with Hannah's sweets:
Having been the subject of various memes, the question was plastered all over the national press; The Telegraph; The Independent; The Guardian; The Daily Mail. They all featured an angry backlash as students sought to mitigate their performance fears by shifting the blame onto the examiners.
The following year, an apology was issued after students complained about this question in a Scottish Higher Exam:
In my opinion, both questions are run-of-the mill. In fact, the latter could feasibly have been made more difficult; I wonder if there was a draft version of the paper where students had to derive the expression for T themselves. The most surprising thing about these problems is that they caused such a stir; the fact that an exam board was moved to apologise beggars belief. It seems to me entirely arbitrary that these questions were singled out and I suspect that it has everything to do with the social media profiles of those sitting the papers and nothing fundamentally to do with the questions themselves. Those who shout the loudest get noticed.
Following the outcry, Durham University's Professor Robert Coe argued that fears over social media backlash would force exam boards into writing overly predictable exam papers. If this were to be true, it would put the credibility of the qualifications at risk. Here's the rub: Exams are supposed to discriminate and they cannot be designed so that every individual swans out beaming broadly because they've aced the paper. If we want the top grade to be sufficiently exclusive so that only 5% of entrants achieve it, then there will necessary have to be questions (in maths at least) that the vast majority are unable to successfully conquer.
Perhaps some expectation management, on the part of both exam boards and schools, is key; if students know that some questions, towards the end of each paper, will be tough then they are less likely to complain. Take this question from a 2016 (the year of the crocodile) Cambridge Pre-U Mathematics exam:
Like the crocodile question, it also involves some elementary Calculus but is far heavier on the algebra and probably more intimidating. Nevertheless, it didn't appear in the press. Why? Well perhaps because students sitting this qualification are used to papers varying significantly from year to year. They might well bemoan the fact that they couldn't answer a particular question but they won't necessarily feel the degree of outrage that would compel them to accuse the exam board of culpability regarding their performance.
It is the nature of mathematics qualifications at present that not all exam questions will be accessible to all students. In fact, if there doesn't exist at least one question on a paper that stumps most candidates then the examiner will not have ensured their paper is sufficiently challenging. Students are well within their rights to bleat about it but journalists should ignore it; even if it is trending worldwide on twitter and thus it goes against their every instinct. Our qualifications system must resist being jumped into a position where the tail is wagging the dog. If there is a genuinely unfair paper then there are proper channels through which teachers can make a case. Perhaps this would become news. Otherwise, giving column inches to the tweets of disgruntled students is, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, irresponsible and unlikely to help anyone anywhere.
Alternatively, I suppose, one could rethink maths exams entirely and assess students by the quality of responses to open ended questions rather than by the difficulty level of the problems they can proficiently solve. Perhaps the following O-Level paper from 1957 is the way forward. Candidates had two and a half hours to answer five questions including the first:
Maybe I'll tweet this to anyone moaning about their maths exams this year to see if they'd have preferred an essay paper.
No, probably not. That won't help anyone either.
from matheminutes http://ift.tt/2rr1FEo
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