Reflection on Comparing 2 Gcse Maths Exam Papers, Aqa and Cie

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Assignment 1 The two papers which were worked through were from Cambridge International Examinations GCSE and AQA higher Tier. The immediate difference that stood out to me was the fact that the CIE paper allowed the use of calculators, whilst the AQA paper did not. As they were both GCSE level mathematics papers, the topics tested were similar for both papers, however there was a noticeable difference in how long the papers to work through and which one was more difficult for me. Questions worth comparing and contrasting were the algebraic ones. Both papers had a question where I had to remove brackets and simplify and they both rewarded two marks for that. In my opinion, this required the ‘understanding’ and ‘applying’ classification of Bloom’s Taxonomy. For three marks, the CIE paper gave an additional question at the end of the algebraic one, which required some thought. The question was about two individuals who had an amount of money and when given another amount of money, one had five times the amount of money than the other. Personally, I did not how to approach this question immediately, so I attempted it again after some time and I ended up solving the question by using simultaneous equations. I called ‘x’ the amount of money added to the initial values and ‘y’ and ‘5y’, the final amount of money which each individual had. As this question did not specify to use simultaneous equations, I believe that this had the required the order of thinking of analysing and evaluating as I had to carefully consider what to do for some time and decide on how this problem could be solved. I also believe that there was an element of creating as I had to create my own algebraic terminology for the amounts each person had. In the CIE paper, there was a single part of a question for one mark, which in my opinion required analysing and evaluation of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

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