u/Just-Champion9549

This is for the ppl in the UAE whose school is currently doing exams made of past papers for portfolio evidence. I know a lot of people (including myself) who walk out of exams saying how they had seen all the questions before and probably got close to full marks. However, I always make sure to add a lot of extra info from my own knowledge since the exam boards have said that they’re grading based on the *content* and *quality* of answers that show a breadth of knowledge. I am mainly talking about the sciences btw since they are most mark scheme based whereas in geo or econ you’d have to write your own essays anyway.

Does this mean that all the people writing the bare minimum on the mark scheme would get a lower grade. Someone told me that apparently ppl would get disqualified if their answers r too close to the mark scheme but I don’t believe that. I’m just confused because there’s gonna be way too many people with high marks and it’s not anyone’s fault. I don’t even think exam boards are using mark schemes since Pearson have said that they don’t care if the evidence is marked or not since it won’t affect their grading process. Does anyone know anything more about this?

What are your schools doing? Yesterday I had my first ‘exam’ (the ones being used for the portfolio of evidence, though they matter as much as the real GCSE exams would) but some people haven’t had any yet since distance learning got announced. My school recently made a change in timetable, so all the exams scheduled for this week are being postponed (but the exam period is just condensed, not extended). So now I have 12 exams in 10 days which is crazy. But I also get the whole of this week off for revision. There’s no guarantee we’re going back to school on Monday, and if not, my school will use exam.net to carry out online exams, which so many people would cheat in.

What are your schools doing? And if you’re doing online exams this week, how is your school proctoring them?