The move to linear exams happened relatively recently. Examiners, teachers and students are all still getting to grips with the system. Previously at this time in the exam cycle, most year 13 students had already completed most of their modules and were simply facing one more modular exam, plus one or two retake units to try and further boost their overall grade. This made predictions and expectations so much easier, as with January results in the bag it was simple to conduct a ‘what-if’ analysis of the likely overall result for individual students. But the exam world has changed, and this presents both threats and opportunities.
On the negative side, the overall result can be hugely impacted by just one below-par performance on a paper. Misreading one or two questions could lead to many lost marks and missing out on the next grade boundary. Also, having to learn and retain information from the whole specification is more challenging and difficult. This, together with the increased level of new theories and frameworks, means that factual recall must be achieved over a much longer time frame.
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