Making a difference: Insights from the summer 2018 exam series

After every exam series we listen to feedback, carry out research and carefully analyse the performance data.

What teachers have told us about the summer 2018 assessments has shown that the improvements we've made really have made a difference.

The improvements we made

We said we'd ensure that in the 2018 assessments:

• the early questions on Foundation tier papers would be accessible to all students and mainly comprise of one-mark questions
• the common questions which appear on both Higher and Foundation tier papers are fully accessible to students targeting grades 4 and 5
• appropriate language and contexts would be used on all questions so that we were only testing mathematical ability
• there was a good coverage of topics tested, including those which are new to the curriculum
• the diagrams were large enough and students had enough working space.

Take a look at what teachers have had to say.

2018 autumn mock exams

These improvements will continue throughout all our future GCSE 9-1 assessments, and we have ensured our 2018 mock papers also follow this approach.

If you’ve not done so already, you can download the 2018 mock exam papers and mark schemes and try them with your students.