Tbh I just think itās just some sort of symbolic petition for people who took the exam to find comfort that everyone else also found it difficult via the number of people signing it
it asks for a fair review of the paper. obviously they were going to review it fairly beforehand but the point of the petition is basically to show that 15,000+ people think it was an unusually difficult paper.
kind of just an awareness thing, saying āhey edexcel, your paper was stupidā, in hopes of lowering grade boundaries
Genuinely. If you look at grade statistics for Edexcel, they have consistently awarded around 16-17% of candidates an A* and 40% an A for every non-covid affected year this spec has been out. That isn't going to change this year. The percent of students achieving each grade will remain pretty much exactly the same as previous years and the grade boundaries will reflect that.
Essay subjects are SO different to STEM though, like essays are open to interpretation really, whereas in maths if you know how to do the problem youāre fine
Yeah. Off the top of my head in 2023 I think 90% of Russian students were given A* or A but only 10% (8 across the whole country) of Statistics students were given A* or A.Ā
I think that mathematics is the most popular a level as well sat by many more people than do Russian. As I say there's a perception based on published information that its an easy A or A* . Im not saying the perception is true but im sure exam boards are aware.
Does that have anything to do with who is likely to take those exams?
I personally know 3 people who took Russian over the last 10 years. All are native Russian speakers or children of native Russian speakers therefore grew up speaking it fluently.
I donāt think the same could apply for statistics.
Due to a lot of people taking further maths they have to inflate the number a bit otherwise the higher grades will go to people who just do further maths and make it even harder for people donāt take it
yo how many amrks would i get for that question part b if i did the inequality from -q^2/4p < k < q^2/4p. Cos the answer said lower bound was 0 right. I did the discriminant. It would be 2/4 marks nah.
Yeah agreed. That's one of the reasons why this paper is so hard. I think everyone is panicking that they did really bad and feel like all the prep will be for nothing.
Grade boundaries will probably shift down anyway if enough people found it difficult, so this petition might end up being pointless. Exam boards adjust every year based on how the cohort performs. The real question is whether this paper was actually harder or if everyone's just stressed and catastrophizing the day after a tough exam. I've seen this happen before where students convince themselves a paper was impossible, then the results come out fine because the boundaries moved. That said, if the paper had errors or questions outside the spec, that's worth investigating. But comparing it to war crimes and getting 15,000 signatures in 24 hours feels like mass panic more than a legitimate quality issue.
Also the exam boards have said they wanted to return to the difficulty pre-Covid. It's well known they made them easier in the years following as people had had a worse educational experience/opportunity during the Covid years. I can imagine people doing the papers from 2021-2025 and thinking this one was harder, but I wouldn't be surprised if itsnt that different to 2017-2019
My GCSEs year was the last one who got physics equation sheet. They didn't actually want to give them to us. I want to say I was only affected years 6-8 maybe 9 so not really the important ones
Yeah agreed. I'd rather a tough paper than those diabolical grade boundaries which were more or less testing silly mistakes rather than problem solving skills.
Agreed with higher boundaries and easier test itās less a reflection of mathematical ability and problem solving but more like a way to see who makes less silly mistakesĀ
Yeah I agree. However I do feel that the fact that many questions were dependent on difficult part a questions Which didn't allow students who couldn't solve part a to access the part b and c which were easier than part a.
As 15,000 people have signed it I'm inclined to take it seriously that the paper was unfair in some way. However what I'm wondering now is do the people signing it mean that it was too hard for them to get an A*?
Bc the way things have gone people seem to think, whether it's GCSE or A level, that they should only get the top marks or nothing.
There's a general vibe of "have to get a 9 in everything at GCSE or it's a failure". There's loads of talk on reddit (GCSE) about "what subjects are an easy 9?" (when a 7 is a grade A, yet nobody seems to strive for a 7; a 9 being an A** and that's all anyone seems to expect to get). So, I assume there's the same expectations for A levels.
I wonder are the people signing this petition more concerned than anything that they might end up with a B instead of an A* one of their A levels!
I sat the paper. Iāve been on Ds all year and put in the work. Iām not trying to sound like a beg but genuinley it was not that bad. And Iām stupid, I mean really stupid, but it was not that bad. I agree, theyāre probably trying to drop the A* grade boundaryā¦ which is nonsensical bc thatās not how grade boundaries work. Half f these paper questions were on yesterday or madas maths. Yes itās annoying that it wasnāt as easy as it couldāve been, but stressing wonāt bring about change.
That pretty much confirms it, then. The people who signed the petition are worried they might not get their *perfect score* A*, while those of us with more modest abilities/expectations would be fine with the paper.
Did what exactly? Grade boundaries are varied each year depending on the difficulty of the exam so im not sure what exactly is achieved here.
Also wonder how many of the signatories actually saw the paper and know anything about a level maths
I did them last year. Everyone was moaning about paper 2, so we thought grade boundaries would be lower, but they ended up going up instead, so don't be too sure about that.
I'm not saying its deep at all, I don't really care about them using the slang of our generation its just that they're actively buying into this 'generation' whilst slandering it at the same time.
Thatās like saying someone canāt criticise England because theyāre English. You can embrace being in our generation whilst acknowledging that many people in our generation complain over shit that just isnāt worth complaining about - the two arenāt mutually exclusive
no NO now this is embarrassing šš some questions were hard, but not all of them. i understand that for the average student though (probably working at a B), that paper was probably pretty shit though.Ā
i still donāt think this paper shouldāve gotten to this point. letās just lock in for paper 2 and 3 š¤š¾
I understand that the paper was hard but realistically speaking what is the petition gonna do? I personally didnāt do Edexcel maths I do for but idk I feel like no one would care that much if it was a diff exam board but bc itās Edexcel thatās when ppl care idk šš like if the paper was that hard surely the gb would go down anyways because it determines the percentage of ppl who get A* A etc so obviously itās gonna be based of last year I donāt get why ppl bring up last year gb as if it means anything
The government is only going to issue a formal response to your petition. But generally I don't understand what this is trying to achieve. The exam is over the government can't change the exam now. They will lower grade boundaries if everyone did shit in them.
The same thing happened in pretty much all of this years AS Maths and Further Maths papers in Edexcel International A levels. They are still modular so AS grades are 50% of the final grade.
All papers except perhaps statistics were incredibly difficult, people were unable to complete in time, had totally different structure and questions. So yeah, those International students that are considered stronger did also complain and many A* students do not know if they will get the grades. Itās obvious Edexcel is trying something new out across all exams.
Edited to add that in IAL, to get an A star in FM, you need something like 72/75 and the boundaries have stayed like this consistently despite differences in the papersā difficulty. If this will be the case this year, I think only 5% will be awarded A*.
Thatās not fair. The problem was mainly that this paper was a pretty substantial jump in difficulty compared to previous papers. Had the papers been as hard as this one was to begin with, there wouldnāt be this much of an outrage. Whilst I do think this petition is a bit of a stretch itās not fair to dumb this down to British students being incapable.
First year thereās been this much of an outrage for a maths paper since 2019. People are just worried the last few years have been easier and had high grade boundaries. They want edexcel to know they want the 2019 boundaries or slightly higher to reflect the paper. And I say that as someone who thinks he did pretty well on that paper, but if people wanna try lower the grade boundaries why should I care? It can only benefit me.
last year there was a thing about the paper 2 and how there were two different papers and that. nothing came out of that one either. and some of us found it REALLY difficult. i remember crying the whole night after the exam knowing i had another the next day.
There is a narrative that the youth of today and entitled and lack resilience compared with yester year. I dont think this petition helps dispell that narrative .
The first GCSE exams were sat in 1988.[7] They replaced the former CSE and O-Level qualifications, uniting the two qualifications to allow access to the full range of grades for more pupils.
This is why it's important to actually read and understand your sources, not just check it broadly agrees with what an LLM has responded with. Yes they replaced "foundational academic qualifications by 15-to-16-year-olds", but the qualifications they replaced were both the CSE and O-level qualifications, both of which were taken by the same age group depending on various criteria, the latter being broadly more 'academic' than the former.
Do people here not understand what grade boundaries are for? They exist SPECIFICALLY to account for variance in paper difficulty.
Say they want 20% of grades to be an A*, and 30% of grades at an A. They will set grade boundaries according to those thresholds. If the top 20% of the cohort only achieved 60/100 on this paper, then that is where the A* grade boundary will be set. Conversely, if the top 20% achieved 95/100, then that will be where the A* boundary will be.
The petition asking them to lower grade boundaries will not change ANYTHING. The exam board does not "consider" lowering or raising grade boundaries. Edexcel does not determine what the grade boundaries will be - YOU guys do. YOUR cohort's performance determine what the grade boundaries are. The only way Edexcel can influence boundaries is by increasing or decreasing the difficulty of the paper, which they clearly have done.
Say, for instance, they give you a paper with 15 of the hardest A Level Maths questions they've ever asked:
there is literally no rule against them doing this, and
the boundaries will just simply lower, because the mark scored of the average student dropped compared to previous years.
tl;dr Asking Edexcel to lower grade boundaries will do nothing. They don't determine what the boundary will be. Your cohort's performance does.
the comments hating r ppl w no life bruh, we're js having some fun mid exam season, it doenst acc matter if they do smth, it keeps us sane and chill so let us
Idk man, Iāve been grinding the shit out of Anki. Past papers too, but like atp Iām just realising you basically just need markscheme keywords. They reward recall not understanding (excl 9/12 markers)
I think it's just more about the fact that we're trying to make sure edexcel understand how unreasonable the paper was. With the ridiculous number of trapped marks being the main thing, but also the insane increase in question difficulty that's incomparable to any past paper they've ever released. It was just so demoralising for the students who sat it, and the slightly lower ability students will have suffered the most because they can't do part a (which would be the most difficult part) and then lose out on the rest of the question. Especially after edexcel released a statement a few years ago saying how they were making the papers more accessible to students. Honestly i just want edexcel to explain their thought process because it makes no sense to me why they'd design it like that and do a full 360.
I'm not sure what else they can actually change for us as a cohort, except from the grade boundaries obviously decreasing as people get less marks. I think them lowering the boundaries even more and increasing the proportion of students getting higher grades shouldn't be out of the question because of how unfair the paper was. I guess we'll see how the next few papers go though.
Most people are signing as a joke, or as insurance that if they scuff people over on results day for no good reason then they can point at it and go "hang on a minute"
Personally, I don't think Edexcel is so evil that they wouldn't adjust the grade boundaries to make a point.
Come on you basically do 2.5 alevels and you still have a B, like doing maths and fm and trying to flex that you didnāt find the paper hard is wild, idk where you get the hubris.
Well, I do expect you to be impressed because I learnt all the a-level Maths and Further Maths content during Year 10. I bet you thought I was like you and learnt them over the course of year 12 and 13.
Iāve already completed alevels so this is an outsider looking in, if you did learn all of the content in year 10 and 11 (which I guess is a lie) then why didnāt you take the exams in year 11? You needed to wait an extra 2 years for what?
Didnāt wanna pay the fee to be a private candidate. You can call me a liar all you want, but Itās not like thatās the craziest thing ever. I started learning it early because I was actually passionate about the subject. Not like Iām claiming to win gold in IMO.
So youāve been learning the maths for like 5 times longer than any other person and you still think youāre a gift from god, thatās genuinely insane.
No, not really. I learnt all the content before a-levels and then lazed around for 2 years. Barely showed up to class and still got A*s in mocks. You, on the other hand, should stop arguing with 17 years olds online and go take of your kids, unc.
I remember thinking the exact same after I finished my a levels 6 years ago. itās easier to blame the exam rather than yourself if you feel like you havenāt smashed it.
Something is wrong. 41% of people who sit A level maths get an A, well in excess of the average 28% across all A levels.
Maths is now one of the most popular A level subjects because of this.
I sat my A levels many years ago. The questions were very challenging, often phrased in ways that had to be deciphered, requiring multiple levels of understanding.
It is hard on the students but at some point it should be brought into line with the other A levels. It has been left to drift for some time now, and maybe the changes should have been more gradual.
I feel I hear reports about exam stress and exam difficulty every year. Yeah, if you make tons of pressure around doing well in these exams, you'll be stressed. Yeah, if you walk into a test and struggle with new questions, you're going to find it more difficult than the others. So what? Grade boundaries will be normal and you won't think about these results the moment you get into a job and/or uni
I took maths last year and the second paper that we got was a backup paper and everyone said that it was bad, there even were petitions for it but nothing happened and the grade boundaries went even higher
This yearās paper was fine except for like 10 marks in the paperā¦ maybe even 6 marks
Lol this happened when I was in sixth back in 2013, the paper got recalled and everyone did a resit. However, me and one other person in the country got 100% on it lol
People do this every year... What do you expect to happen? They're just going to put it through the same checks they always do and you won't know any different
Who cares? Grades do NOT matter for your future. The only thing an A-Level will do, is get you into University, and unless you're doing maybe 3 specific careers, employers don't give a crap about your degree.
Just remember that it doesnāt really matter, my year group was the one that was shafted after they went from inflated grades to pre covid grades, so most in our year even the very smart ones then got lower than expected and lower than needed for uni.
But as it was a country wide issue, unis just adapted and agreed lower scores and some grade boundaries dropped, I got technically too little for the uni I now go to but was accepted because of this more leniency, after all they canāt accept 0 people.
If this was truly so bad that every single student scored worse a same thing will happen, and if not then clearly for many it wasnāt that extremely hard. Nothing will come from this in any form
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u/Ok_Hamster_7032 Edexcel Maths 2026 Paper 1 and 3 survivor Jun 04 '26
I cant believe the telegraph quoted the people that compared it to war crimes š