Supervising the Listening Paper for OCR this afternoon, I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked at the back page of the question paper to read a whole load of answers there!!

They had printed the track list for the CD, but it had names of composers, instruments, styles etc. There were 10% of the marks written there. Sadly, my two condidates didn't notice it!

Yep, I noticed about half way through the exam No one else in my class did though...
Was quite reassuring to find that I'd got the correct composer for both the "name a possible composer" questions

Thats better than the time signature one in the edexcel paper last year!!!

hahaha. that was funny......... i looked at the back and found all those answers. hopefully not everyone noticed otherwise all the boundaries will go up......... not being selfish!!!!

Damn...my friends said about that after the exam, unfortunately I was not as observant and was the unfortunate soul in seat A1, so I couldn't "notice"(as they all did) what anyone else was doing either. So oh well, I think those questions were actually amongst the ones I got right...hopefully.
What about the question 1 b and c? B was folk wasnt it? what was C, I put down what I thought it was, but it's nagging away at me as to whether that is right.
What did others put?

Oh my gosh - will the exam board actually let those results be the final ones I would've thought people would have to do the exam again...it might not be fair, but it's not fair either way around if some noticed and others didn't! I wish I had checked my edexcel one now haha!!

Damn...my friends said about that after the exam, unfortunately I was not as observant and was the unfortunate soul in seat A1, so I couldn't "notice"(as they all did) what anyone else was doing either. So oh well, I think those questions were actually amongst the ones I got right...hopefully.
What about the question 1 b and c? B was folk wasnt it? what was C, I put down what I thought it was, but it's nagging away at me as to whether that is right.
What did others put?
How did people think it went...I hope the grade boundaries don't go up...(like lamiya, not being selfish )
EDIT:hold on, why has my posting being posted twice with and without the edit?how odd... sorry everyone)

How awful! Such incompetence from OCR: I hope your teachers are all complaining.
It is truly unbelievable: thank goodness I did Edexcel.

I had that! My teacher said nothing like that would ever really happen in an exam - how wrong she was !

One major headache for the folks who've now got to deal with it.. Do they scrap the marks, penalizing students for whom that was a strength, or do they allow some people extra marks they wouldn't have got... 1 mark isn't much but this is crazy!

It even made the letters page of the Daily Telegraph if anyone saw it yesterday.

Just curious... what was the time signature gaffe in edexcel last year?

One of the early parts of a question was 'What is the time signature of this extract?' and then later on in the same question.... 'This extract was in 4/4...... (rest of question)' Quite amusing!

Today it was on the bbc:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7414129.stm

can't believe it, 12000 of us and they think that no one who noticed the answers would use it to their advantage? ridiculous.
How can they not make people disadvantaged?
besides, actually, once you had the answer to the composer, you knew what style it was, and could have a proper stab at features, so it's bigger than they make out in my opinion.
Maybe they should ignore the listening paper, and give grades based on composition,performance,terminal task...or compare predicted grades etc...oh i dont know, but it seems like they don't realise the scale of the potential those "credits" had...

It's doesn't just affect on the results of the students who did twig that the answers were there and used them - the grade boundaries'll probably rocket, and those who didn't realise might be seriously disadvantaged.


Our school appeard on BBC's Regional coverage, with the Head of Music being interviewed about the effect this would have upon "his" pupils. Of course, he (allegedly, of course) appeared to say that the pupils were sent in so well-prepared that they'd already have got all the answers without any "help". Hmm.

I'm going to start a poll, just to point out how crazy that statement is.

....although the results sadly don't seem to prove it

They also don't seem to realise that, if they do keep everything in, it disadvantages people from other exam boards. I did mine in AQA, so it will be a bit unfair if you get higher grades just for being examined in OCR.

I don't see why they don't just remove that question and mark the paper out of slightly less.

It is a really difficult one. There were some people who did not see the answers. That part of the paper might have been the best part for some people and if it is removed it could mean they receive a lower grade or fail, even though they had not copied the answers.