I support a lot of English departments. This is what I usually see.
By the time students get to questions 4 and 5, many are running out of steam. Between 10 and 20% give up altogether, scoring below 10% of the marks for those questions.
On paper 1 of AQA GCSE Language, questions 4 and 5 are 75% of the marks.
On paper 2, they are 70% of the marks.
If you run out of steam in those, you can kiss your grade goodbye.
The Solution?
Do the questions in reverse order.
(Or the question order for Paper 2 might be 5, 3, 4, 2, 1 because it is easier to learn one whole text in Q3 before comparing two in Q4).
Then you will have loads of energy and concentration for 70-75% of the marks.
Does the Solution Work?
There’s only one way to find out. Try it in your revision, in your mocks.
You may be someone who has total focus and energy, in which case the order won’t matter to you.
But, if your mind starts to wander, your hand starts to hurt or you just don’t feel great today - these flipping exams are draining me every day - then this is a solution for you.
AQA Says It Do the Questions in the Right Order
AQA says that doing question 2 and 3 prepares you for question 4, as you will use many of the ideas from those questions in your answer to question 4.
They have no proof that this actually happens.
They could check to see if lots of students get much lower marks on question 4 than the number of students getting lower marks on questions 2 and 3. In other words, they could check if question 4 encourages students to give up.
But they don’t.
The 2023 Examiners’ Report
AQA won’t let me quote the examiners’ report till next year, in case you use it to cheat in your mocks. But here’s the gist of what they said:
The average mark for question 4 was lower in 2023 than in previous years. This can only be explained by online advice (we’ll mention no names - but you know who you are) telling students to answer question 4 in the wrong order.
So, I’m like all, wow, is my advice just, you know, dumb? Like, am I the idiot here?
Who is the Idiot?
Well, there was only one way to find out, so I wrote to AQA and asked what evidence they had that students were:
Doing the paper in the wrong order
And then getting lower marks because of that order
I’ll paraphrase what they said:
We have no way of telling if any student did the questions in the wrong order.
We lied, in writing, in the official examiners’ report.
We just made stuff up, ok?
But it must be true even if we have no evidence. It can be the only reason the marks went down. There was nothing wrong with the question.*
(They didn’t name me, but as I think I am the only teacher online telling students to do question 4 in the wrong order - apparently I am to blame for the children in England getting lower marks).
Well, well, well.
*There was a lot wrong with the question. If you didn’t know the appearance, sound and habits of a particular animal, or the names for parts of a boat, or that stern and cross have more than one meaning, and a heap of other prior knowledge, the Source was pretty confusing. Check out the reaction on TikTok just after the exam - priceless.
Let’s Look at the Evidence Instead of Making Stuff Up
One of the schools I work for trains their students to do the exam questions in reverse order.
It is a school where students arrive with much lower SAT schools than average. Let’s see what happens to their GCSE scores.
Ok, so they score 1.9% above national average. Not bad, when they should score way below national average.
They score 1.4% higher in paper 1.
And 2.1% higher on paper 2.
By doing the paper in reverse order, students do worse on Question 2. They are getting tired - just as I told you they would. They have scored 6.6% worse on this question!
But, this is only an 8 mark question. 10% of 8 is one mark. So, they have lost just over half a mark!
Oh no, they also do worse in question 3. 8% worse. But, this is an 8 mark question, so they have lost less than one mark.
Over the two questions, worth 16 marks, they have lost 7.3% of the marks, so 1 mark.
Oh look, they have out performed schools nationally on question 4, because they did it before question 2 and 3. They are 0.2% better. This is a 20 mark question, so they have gained no extra marks.
Remember, they should do worse than nationally, because they arrived with lower SAT scores in year 7.
But wait just a cotton picking minute. The tiredness factor in questions 2 and 3 resulted in 7.3% lower marks. If the same applied here, they would have lost 1.5 marks.
But that’s not the end of the story. When students give up on question 4, they give up bigtime.
They would actually have lost way more marks.
Take a look at the spread of marks in question 4:
27 students getting 4 marks or less. That’s a big number, especially when students are still relatively fresh.
The real drop off, when you do Question 4 in the right order, is much larger.
What else do you notice? No one gets top marks. Hardly anyone gets close. This is typical. It is why AQA hardly every publishes a 20 mark answer to this question - they are as rare as a fact-filled examiner’s report (sorry, hen’s teeth).
Normally AQA publish their highest scoring examples at 18 marks.
That’s the other reason to do this question early - you need 20 explanations to get 20 marks. That’s hard work! 15 explanations is hard work too.
AQA Can’t Handle the Truth
Check out that spread in the graph again. AQA have that graph for all schools in the country.
So, I’ve asked AQA to tell me how many students in the country scored 0, and 1, and 2 and 3. Why? Because this tells you how many are simply giving up in the exam. It tells you how damaging it is to do the questions in the right order.
I’ve asked the same about question 5.
The graph is right there. It’s maybe two or three mouse clicks away.
So you know what they said? Again, I paraphrase.
We are a charity. Because of that, your freedom of information request has no power. We refuse to answer your question. Go away.
What do you infer?
Could it be that large numbers of students just give up on the day? Well, you’ve been in the exam hall during your mocks. You’ve seen the heads go down, the pens stop writing, the students giving up.
It’s much more likely that students will give up doing the questions in the right order.
What Happens When You do Question 5 First?
AQA advise you to use the inspiration you get from questions 2, 3 and 4 in your answer to question 5. That’s why they say you should do it in the right order.
Yes, apparently it won’t occur to you to use similes and metaphors and alliteration and all that stuff, left just to your own imagination.
But questions 2 and 3 will suddenly teach you to use these techniques and you will fly.
(Only don’t copy them, or you will crash land).
Well, I think that’s rubbish. But what does the evidence say?
Wow, a massive hike in marks. 4.9% higher than schools nationally. (This score is also because the school teaches students to write well).
Wow, another massive difference. 5.4%.
And remember, these students started the schools with SAT scores well below national average.
So, cast iron proof that doing the exam in reverse order works for most students. Don’t leave it until the real thing to find out. You probably have a second mock exam. And there are plenty of past papers to revise from.
Paper 2 Shows Exactly the Same Pattern
Check it out and draw your own conclusions.
Whatever you are studying, I have a guide for it here.