Hey you … how’s it going?
Do you ever get the Sunday night jitters? I used to, now not to so much though … I suppose I’m lucky in that I like my job … well … I spend more time enjoying it than not enjoying it … and that’s got be a win … right?
Anyway, here I am with a look at Pearsons Higher Paper 1 and overall, there is a lot to be proud of. The general consensus from the examiners is that our students really stuck their teeth into this paper … even on the nastiest problem-solving questions toward the back, kids were giving it a go. Methodical, neat working saved a lot of students who made minor arithmetic slips, which just proves we need to keep hammering home the importance of showing every single step.
The Good News!
Students showed fantastic fluency with routine topics and standard non-calculator methods. There were brilliant marks scored across the board on these essentials:
- The First Six Questions: The paper started out beautifully, and most students picked up the bulk of their marks early on. We’ve been saying for years how important that “Crossover” content is, regardless of your tier of entry!
- Algebra: Both algebraic simplification and expanding triple brackets were answered incredibly well. The report explicitly noted that students who used grids for triple brackets rarely missed terms, so keep pushing that visual method!
- Recurring decimals: Converting recurring decimals to fractions was a massive success story.
- Basic Skills: Finding the nth term of a linear sequence, basic probability, and calculating percentage profit were all standard wins for the vast majority.
What Caught Them Out …
As always, it was the questions requiring deep interpretation, spatial reasoning, or multiple steps that caused the wheels to wobble slightly.
- Correlation vs. Proportionality: This is a classic vocabulary trap. Some students correctly spotted the pattern but wrote “directly proportional” instead of “positive correlation”. The examiners remind us in the report that a graph showing direct proportion must pass through the origin (0, 0).
- Similarity in 3d. This was a real stumbling block. Too many students found the area scale factor and just multiplied the time by that, completely forgetting that capacity and filling times rely on the volume scale factor. This one was the cause of a discussion between Seager and I when doing the worked solutions (I won’t tell you who was correct!) … but it does remind me that many of the papers leaked online before the 24-hour embargo was lifted included incorrect solutions and that’s worth reminding students after the exams not to trust what is released in a rush!
- Histograms without a Scale: When the frequency density axis is blank, students panic. The big misconception here was assuming that the height difference between bars represented the frequency difference, rather than looking at the area.
- Quadratic Inequalities: While most kids could find the critical values by factorising perfectly, a lot of them completely fell apart when writing down the final regions. They wrote contradictory statements instead of separating them into distinct regions.
Some other things worth noting …
Reading these reports is all well and good but we need to take action to have an impact, so in addition to noting the above, it’s worth noting the below and think about how to adapt your teaching etc (blah blah blah! )
- Back to Basics with Decimals: Even on the Higher tier, simple place value errors ruined decimal multiplication (like forgetting the placeholder zero). Get them approximating answers first so they know if their decimal point placement makes sense.
- Sketching for Inequalities: The report explicitly mentioned that students who drew a quick sketch of the quadratic curve or a number line were far more successful at identifying the correct regions for inequalities. Make sketching standard practice, not an optional extra.
- Learn the Circle Theorem Keywords: On the final geometric proof question, kids lost marks simply because they left out words like “radius” when explaining why a tangent meets a line at 90 degrees. Precision language matters!
- Haphazard Working Costs Marks: On big multi-step questions like the cuboid surface area or the trapezium surds question, weaker responses had numbers scattered all over the page. If the examiner can’t follow the story of their calculation, they can’t award the partial credit.
Right, that is it from me for today. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing, but with a sharp focus on neat presentation and precise mathematical vocabulary.
There… I read that sh!t so you didn’t have to!
Mel x
PS: They aren’t really sh!t and if I can get more of you reading them (even if only via me), it’ll be a good thing!
PPS: Found this useful? Leave me a comment below!
Really helpful Mel – thank you.