Exam season is almost over, and this year students have been taking to Twitter in record numbers to complain, commiserate and celebrate about their various exams.
The #EdexcelMaths paper received a lot of attention, not least because of a question about a girl called Hannah and some sweets. The problem had two sentences of narrative about sweets, before asking pupils to prove an equation, or, as @ExamProblems put it:
“Hannah eats some sweets.
Now calculate the circumference of the Moon using your tracing paper and a rusty spoon.”
But not everyone sympathised. @SurrealAnarchy asked: “Are pupils today so mollycoddled and spoon-fed that they don’t expect to get anything difficult or wrong in an exam?”
Another exam that raised students’ ire was the #ocrbiology paper. @ruthy_payne thought the exam board could have put more work into finding suitable names: “OCR’s plan all along was to get us disqualified due to laughing at the name `Dicky’.” And @mattfenton07 shared his answer for a question on what algae gets from coral: “Love”.
Social media is also useful after exams, as @katieelenasharp revealed: “The first thing I do after a terrible exam is search on Twitter to hope everyone else found it awful too.”
Sarah Cunnane
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