Students set ‘impossible’ maths question demand new exam
AS-level school students who were set an unsolvable exam question are demanding a new test. Blogging for Channel 4 News, teenager Jamie Polius has called the mistake a “schoolboy error”.
The OCR exam board, one of the biggest in England, has apologised for the unanswerable question which was set in a maths AS-level paper.
A total of 6,790 sixth-formers struggled to make sense of it on Thursday 26 May.
The board has released full details of the mistake, which appeared on the Decision Mathematics 1 paper.
It said: “The question as printed asked candidates to verify the shortest route, for two given conditions, giving values of 32.4 + 2x km and 34.2 + x km. These values should have been 34.3 + 2x km and 36.1 + x km respectively. The error was not to have included twice the journey between A and B (0.9 km) and the journey between F and G (1.0 km) in the values given.”
The OCR has promised to take the error into account when marking the exam, as students complain that the mistake could affect their university places. But there are growing calls for a full resit, to allow students a fresh chance with a new set of questions.
Seventeen-year-old Jamie Polius, who attends Palmer’s College in Essex, blogs for Channel 4 News on why he feels cheated.
'I feel sorry for those who may miss university offers'
Firstly I panicked, as I thought I was doing something wrong, so I checked my method again and again, to no avail. By this time I had to put almost completely random answers into the last two questions as I just did not have time to complete them.
The question came as a complete shock and the fact that it was worth 11 per cent of the whole paper, meant considerable time was spent attempting it.
OCR's reaction has been awful. How did an exam that is written months in advance and supposedly rigorously checked managed to contain such a basic, schoolboy error?
OCR has been quoted as saying it will use statistical methods to ensure every candidate gets a fair grade, representative of his or her efforts.
The board has now said it will mark answers to this impossible question, but how can you mark wrong answers? No statistical method will account for candidate A who spent 20 minutes on this question, but came up with no attempt of a solution, with candidate B who spent five minutes on this question and swiftly moved on. In an ideal world a re-sit would be the fairest thing to do.
I just feel sorry for those who may miss university offers because of this, or in my case, not being able to apply to certain universities due to a low grade in this module.