Live webinar-GCSE (9-1) Mathematics Summer 2017 exams review

Oct 20, 2026

Uploaded by Patrick

Recorded webinar transcript for a summer 2017 GCSE Mathematics (9-1) exams review, hosted by Graham Cumming of Edexcel. The session explains the exam board’s perspective on what went well and what did not, outlines how teachers can approach future papers, and reviews introductory changes to the specification, grading, and ramping difficulty. It also previews question types, including unexpectedly difficult items, crossover questions across tiers, problem-solving approaches, and tougher higher-tier questions.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Overview and aims of the webinar

Introductory data and topic coverage

Specification challenges, grading, and ramping

Exam board support materials and tier decisions

Session wrap-up focus: tougher questions

Transcript for recorded event Course title: Live webinar-GCSE (9-1) Mathematics Summer 2017 exams review Event Code: 17OAM07/01 | Slide | Purpose of Slide | Additional Information | | --- | --- | --- | | Slide 1 | Welcome to
Emporium Towers | Darkness falls across the land and the midnight hour is close at hand. Welcome to Emporium Towers. You'll see a picture here of where we broadcast from, this is where we keep all the cabinets, this is where we hold our summer parties.
My name's Graham Cumming and I’m subject adviser at Edexcel, and the next hour and a half or so is my take on the summer GCSE maths exams. I'm not an examiner, I don’t see the papers before they happen, but I see them after they've happened, and my qualification I suppose to do this is many years of experience at Edexcel and the exam board and speaking to teachers and speaking to examiners before and after the summer exams, and really to share with you, as far as I can, what went well, what didn’t go well, what sort of things we'll be looking at for the future of these examinations, and some things that we can pass onto you that may help you with your teaching and preparing students for the exams. No doubt there'll be a few horrors during the session, certainly one or two that I wanted to point out.
What I’m going to do is look at some introductory data to start with on the examinations and then I'm going to just take a few topic areas and illustrate them with questions. I'm going to look at some questions which were perhaps unexpectedly difficult, I’m going to look at crossover questions, those that have appeared on both the higher and foundation tier and how you might use those when you're thinking about tier of entry. I'm going to have a look at some problem solving questions and think about what's different and what the approach has been, and then I’m going to finish off just looking at some of the tougher questions, those that were on the higher tier.
I’m not sure that anyone has come out from this new specification covered in glory. I think the introduction has been very difficult, and when I say covered in glory the exception is certainly the teachers who have delivered it and the students who have studied for it. I think there has been an incredible amount of work that has gone onto try and catch up, learn what's new, bring students up to the new standards.
I think as far as the introduction of this specification went, if I think of a little history, back in 2002 when we brought in the new GCSE with the data handling in, data handling didn’t go very well, it got abolished in the end, it was a decision then from the regulator of the time to say that we wouldn’t bring in any more maths qualifications or curriculum without a lot of piloting. There was a pilot of a double GCSE went for some years, nothing really came of that. Then there was a linked pair pilot which has only just finished and for which we learned a lot, and that was going to be the double GCSE, possibly the new maths, but that got ditched as well. And ministers change, regulators change, that promise seemed to get forgotten, we got anew curriculum which hadn’t really been tested out. It's called the new, the big fat GCSE, so there was a lot more to it, there wasn’t a lot of advice on how much extra time should be given to it, there wasn’t any stipulation, it was for schools to decide, so that was all a bit vague really. There was a new grading system that hadn’t been tested out, hadn’t been modelled particularly, there was a new ramping being brought in to the papers to make them harder or to make them get harder faster. So that changed things up. All those things came at once to change things, so it left everyone, | | | | I mean it left us as the exam board just as much and our examiners, perhaps not knowing which way to go. It certainly left a lot of teachers unsure about what to do, and what the new standard was. We had the problems with the grade 4 and 5 alo

FAQs

Who presents the GCSE Mathematics summer 2017 exams review and what is their role?

Graham Cumming, subject adviser at Edexcel, presents the session. He is not an examiner but shares insights based on extensive experience with the exam board and discussions with teachers and examiners.

What key challenges arose from the new specification introduction?

The transcript highlights difficulty in the introduction, uncertainty about the new standard, late accreditation and support materials, and limited information about grade boundaries before exams.

How does the webinar plan to help teachers and students prepare for future exams?

It outlines what went well and what didn’t, discusses examiners’ approaches to new ramping and question sets, and previews types of questions (difficult, crossover, problem-solving, and tougher higher-tier items) to guide teaching and tier decisions.

Oct 20, 2026

Uploaded by Patrick