Exam board AQA must take action before next year’s physics A level after reports that one of this summer’s papers was “unreasonably difficult”, subject experts have warned.
The Institute of Physics’ (IOP) director of science, innovation and skills, Louis Barson, said it was disappointing to hear that the paper has been “unreasonably difficult” this year after his organisation had received assurances from AQA that it would take steps in response to a meeting raising teachers’ concerns about last summer’s paper.
“It’s incredibly disappointing that physics A-level students have once again had their confidence knocked by what initial reports seem to indicate is an unreasonably difficult paper from AQA,” Mr Barson said.
He added that “it seems nothing has changed”, and urged AQA to act on concerns ahead of next year’s exams.
Students crying after physics A-level exam
The IOP has written to AQA about the A-level paper 2 that students sat on 6 June.
Meanwhile, several physics teachers and heads of department have voiced concerns about the exam on social media.
Dr Karen Hill, head of physics at West Kirby Grammar School, on The Wirral, told Tes that she wrote to AQA after the exam to complain about the difficulty, citing concerns raised by parents and students as well as by a network of physics teachers.
“I have a few students who were on track for an A* and are planning to study physics at university. One of them emailed me after the exam asking if it was too late to apply for an apprenticeship,” she said.
“Exam invigilators told me there were students crying.”
Dr Hill added that she had decided to sit the paper herself, and while she was able to complete it in the allotted two hours, it wasn’t easy for her.
“It ends up being a test of resilience rather than of physics knowledge, as the students that do well will be the ones who didn’t panic. I have never felt it was this hard before,” she said.
Dr Hill said she has now given her Year 12s a different exam board’s paper to complete and is asking them whether they would like to swap.
She and other physics teachers raised concerns that difficult exam papers would put students off taking physics at A level - particularly girls, whom some said they had been working hard with to increase their uptake of the subject.
Switching exam boards
Dr Christopher Gallagher, head of physics at St Paul’s Way Trust School in London, told Tes that after the exam his department applied to change exam boards mid-stream for its current Year 12s.
“Our students were absolutely horrified and despondent,” he said. “They thought paper 1 was OK but they came out of paper 2 saying they had never seen anything like that before.”
Dr Gallagher said students found that they had to spend a lot of time deciphering what the questions were asking them before they could apply their physics knowledge, and that harder questions seemed to be scattered across the paper rather than the difficulty level gradually increasing.
“This isn’t the first time the AQA paper has been like this,” he added. “For students who are lower in confidence, when there are those really hard questions right at the front, they get themselves into a panic.
“You expect the strongest students to be getting more than 60 per cent. It has an impact on the Year 12s, too, because they’re doing these past papers when they’re making a decision on what to study at university. It feels very dispiriting for them if they’re only getting 50 per cent.”
Dr Gallagher said his department is moving to another exam board that it feels has a more appropriate difficulty level for A-level exams. He added that he felt the level of difficulty of AQA’s GCSE physics exams is, by contrast, just right.
Fears over physics A-level entries
The grade boundaries for last year’s AQA physics A level meant that students had to achieve 127 to 135 marks out of 250 to get an A, depending on the option they were taking. This amounts to scoring between 51 and 54 per cent for an A.
Another head of department for physics at a private school said he really liked the challenging subject content of the AQA A level, but felt that the exams in the past two years have been too challenging.
“This year and last year’s paper 2 were unpleasant for students. It’s quite hard to recruit them to the A level anyway, and this doesn’t help,” he told Tes.
“It’s really important the papers feel fair because it’s a hard A level. But the past year they have been faced with an unreasonable set of challenges.
“The questions have been abstract and obscure, and it’s hard to see what to do. It leaves the students unnerved and under immense pressure. It’s particularly hard if you don’t also do A-level maths, which shouldn’t be a requirement.”
An AQA spokesperson said: “We’re aware of concerns about our A-level physics paper 2 and we’re looking into this in detail, building on the work we carried out to improve paper 3 last year. We look forward to meeting with the Institute of Physics to discuss this.
“The quality of our exam papers is of the utmost importance to us and that’s why we thoroughly quality check and analyse all papers before students sit them. Panels of senior examiners, teachers and language experts help make sure that our questions are a correct and fair assessment of our specification.
“After the exam, we set grade boundaries so that it won’t be easier or harder to get a particular grade this year than it is in any other year. We are already adding an additional layer of assurance for next year’s papers as a result of these concerns and will continue to take action as appropriate.”
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