Clearing here we come! I just hope everyone else found it as hard as I did so the grade boundaries fall.

Were they the hardest papers of all time, or what?

Manic

By Really psed of on Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - 06:29 pm:

I agree totally. The first paper had a few easy questions but there were loads of questions on searching and sorting files!!! Why so many?

Also, that question about how a processor deals with an instruction if it gets a power failure interrupt. Is that a trick question? If the power fails then everything stops working.

I dunno what the answer to normalising 1.01 was?

The second paper was an absolute nightmare. I hate questions about Requiremnts Specs and Systems Specs cos the exam board always change their mind every year and they dont match what is in the BCS guide, which is what our teacher always tells us to use.

By Peter Western on Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - 08:11 pm:

NIGHTMARE!!!!

I didn't understand that database question in the first paper. Why did it give all the data in a flat file and then say it was a relational database?

What did you give for a key for Production? I just said Production ID. OR did they want a compound key with name, date and type? (but that wouldn't work because you could have people involved in the same play in different places at the same time. Did you need to invent e.g Venue and add that to the key as well?

Our teacher is always telling us that the markers don't understand how to do half of the questions in the exam paper so not to worry as we can appeal any poor marking.

By Piede off bigtime on Thursday, June 24, 2004 - 11:20 pm:

Those papers were the worst I've seen. I was really confident. My teacher has been excellent. We covered everything, revised loads of topics and worked so hard all year.

Why did OCR do this to us (just like previous years)?

Our teacher also told us that she expects to have to appeal many of our results cos the markers couldn't do half the questions themselves. I'm glad other teachers have told their pupils the same thing.

I have a suggestion to help. If OCR's markers are so good and understand what they are doing, let them sit the papers at the same time we students have to do it. Go on, OCR, I dare you. You set such crap exams. You are so confident how good your markers are. This is your chance to shine.

I predict that Computing comes bottom this year for A, B and C grades out of all A levels (instead of only 3rd bottom like last year).

Do any teachers who mark papers read this? Are you quaking at the thought of having to sit the papers you are supposed to be preparing your students for? I bet you wouldn't do that well if you had to sit these shi**y papers would you?