AQA Biology

[Lino249]

Hello.

As you may or may not know GCSE students around the Uk (I included) had to sit an exam on Unit 1A Biology this Tuesday (17th May). There were one or two questions that seemed a little odd to put in the paper however afterwards a lot of the students got angry at AQA (the exam board). Apparently, they have started a petition of around 2,000 people demanding an apology from AQA but I'm not all too sure. One of the questions was along the lines of " A drug is tested by an independent company. What is meant by an independent company?". Now this was a little strange but I can understand its placing in the paper. The second question that created anger from students was about a graph given that showed the results from a survey of 100 15-year-old boys and 15-year-old girls and what their favourite alcoholic drink was. Now this was taken badly as it seemed to encourage underage drinking. The categories in the graph were things like spirits, beers, wine etc. Now obviously 15-year-olds should not really be exposed to these things yet in my opinion, so I wanted to ask what your thoughts were on this if you have heard of it. If not then please have a look at the articles that I have provided. Hope that this doesn't sound too crazy but I thought that its relevance and popularity deserves a place on the forum. Thank you.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/05/17/students-left-fuming-over-gcse-biology-exam-that-contained-quest/

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/aqa-exam-students-left-baffled-after-business-studies-question-appears-on-biology-paper-a7034816.html

[Prometheus]

I couldn't find the exact questions on either link - did i miss it? I'd like to see the actual presentation, not what disgruntled students say it is.

 

More generally, maybe it would be a good thing to encourage this alleged cross-over between subjects to discourage students from compartmentalising their learning.

[CharonY]

I did not find the details either. But especially the first question, I have no idea why that would create an outrage. Seems like a trivial question to me.

[jimmydasaint]

As a Science teacher who "taught" the Biology module in the O.P. I would regard a valid assessment to be both representative and reliable otherwise it is invalid.

 

In terms of percentage of word content over the whole of the Biology Unit (AQA Biology B1 examination), the heaviest emphasis was on Immunology and on Genetic Engineering. However there were nine topics and any representative and reliable assessment could be expected to choose a question from most, if not all, of the topics. However, this was not the case and the examination had a "sneaky" feel to it as if the examiners wanted to catch pupils out using applied knowledge questions (45% of the examination compared to 25% most years).

 

The attitude of most students is summarised by a student's you tube post:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w7HYNCs-UM

Edited May 25, 2016 by jimmydasaint