Former examination board Maths Adviser. Occasional comments about UK exams. No longer posting here.

Essex, England
Joined March 2020
A table of all GCSE subject grade distributions for boards offering subjects in England (four images)
7
5
1
27
6,872
Graham Cumming retweeted
After 6+ months of back & forth with OCR over last summer’s GCSE maths exams, this complaint has been upheld by Ofqual. It’s not enough. OCR must go further & re-mark. Many students have lost out! @Miss_Snuffy you’ll be very interested! ocrmaths2025bounds.netlify.a…
3
7
1
15
4,991
Something for those #coremaths lessons
ROBERTS: If you cut something by 100%, the cost goes down to 0. If you cut it by 600%, the drug companies are actually paying you to take their product. So it raises the question -- how much of last night's speech was hyperbole? LUTNICK: No. What he's saying is if a drug was $100 and you bring the drug down to $13, if you're looking at it from $13, it's down 7 times ROBERTS: It's not a 600% cut LUTNICK: But it's 700% higher price before. It's down 700% now. So $13 would have to go up 700% to get back to the old one. So it all depends on when you look at it.
2
2
13
2,654
None of the exam boards really want to introduce online exams at scale - they’ll be expensive, time-consuming and with a good chance of going wrong (95% right wouldn’t be good enough, probably not even 99%), and they carry a large risk of reputational damage 🧵1/5
1
2
4
2,061
Ofqual too have shown themselves to be reluctant about online exams. They (and by extension the DfE and Secretary of State) will get the rap if the online exams, most likely, go wrong and the exam board(s) will get the credit if they go right 4/5
1
2
1
487
The best option for existing exam boards would be for there to be an a separate start-up boutique online exams only board - then if the exams go wrong, they take all the blame and disappear, but if exams go right, the other boards can fight to buy it out 5/5
2
2
442
Hello @pearson @pearsonedexcel - can you tell me why all the grade statistics information has disappeared from your website?
1
2,033
Parking metres? About five for a regular space these days
🟠 Look after the penny and the pound will look after itself... One couple took this saying to the extreme, being accused of stealing €1m in loose change by taking coins out of parking metres @SophyRidgeSky and @WilfredFrost chat about the alleged penny pinching pair
766
Treasury protestors outside the OBR offices
519
Probably a good day to post this again #coremaths
How marginal tax works [✏️ Mona Chalabi]
3
19
2,409
Financial literacy? Oh, the maths teachers can do that
Usual questions: what exactly comprises financial education, teach it instead of what, and which subject teachers will be expected to cover it? (I fear I know the answer to the third one)
2
1
11
2,393
Good luck to all those Year 12 resitting Foundation tier GCSE Maths this week - remember, about 10,000 students will achieve Grade 4 or better this time round, so be one of them! Make it the shortest “endless cycle” ever known
2
1
8
1,163