NCEA Mathematics Exam Review
November 2016 mistakes | NCEA Level 1 | NCEA Level 2 | NCEA Level 3
November 2016 mistakes
Numerous maths exams this month contained errors, and at all levels from NCEA Level 1 through to Scholarship. This NZ Herald article (sadly now behind a paywall) lists them:
EXAM MISTAKES:
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Level 1 Maths, 9.30am 17 November: Question 2A contained a discrepancy in a graph, the data in a table did not match the graph.
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Level 2 Maths (calculus paper), 9.30am November 24: A figure given in question 2B was wrong.
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Level 3 Statistics, 2:00pm 24 November: Probabilities in a table provided at question 3B added up to more than 1, rendering the question, and a subsequent question, impossible to answer.
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Scholarship Statistics, 9.30am 17 November: Question 1, Figure 2 information contained in a table did not appear in related scatter plot graphs.
How is it possible that these errors were not caught? It boggles the mind.
How the mistakes were handled during exams also needs reviewing. The NZ Herald reporting on the statistics error (sadly now behind a paywall):
Leyser tried to raise the error with the exam supervisor, but said he was dismissed as simply failing to understand the question.
"They just said, 'no one else has complained about it so surely you're just missing something'.
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However, towards the end of the exam, it became clear that others were struggling too, he said.
"Quite a few people were staying in much longer than two hours and just by looking around I could see that a lot of other students were looking at the same page as me, so I had figured that there's probably something going on there," Leyser said.
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His fears were shared by Long Bay College student Ethan Laby, who said the mistake was "completely unfair on us students".
"It is fine for NZQA to say that they will mark the paper accordingly, to ensure that the grades are fair, however they actually fail to realise the extent of the impact that having a wrong question in a test paper has on students," he said.
Students had quickly realised there was a problem with the question, he said.
"This was a very clear mistake that was picked up by everyone who stayed the whole three hours."
NCEA Level 1 Maths exams
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2016
2016 NCEA Level 1 – MCAT. September 2016. The very first question in the Day 2 exam has infinite solutions. Yay, NCEA!
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2017
The NZ Herald has a collection (sadly now behind a paywall) of the harder maths questions from NCEA Level 1 in 2017 – which some maths teachers have pointed out require skills not taught until Level 2, and require students to ignore real world physics (much like this physics exam question from 2019).
NCEA Level 2 Maths exams
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2016
2016 NCEA Level 2 Calculus. November the same year as the infamous September 2016 MCAT exam. Want to try to find the equation of a tangent that doesn't touch the parabola it's a tangent of? Yay NCEA!
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2019
2019 NCEA Level 2 – Algebra. Includes the infamous "rectangle with negative height" problem. Yay, NCEA! Also some other tricky questions, including one that doing full working the way the assesment schedule does it would take about a page and a half.
2019 NCEA Level 2 – Calculus. One question which seemed strangely easy.
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2020
2020 NCEA Level 2 – Statistics. Question TWO (c) features a graph of "70 test drives of a second-generation EV". The graph (Figure 1) shows 69 data values. Yay, NCEA!
This is another exam that wasn't checked properly before release. 69 and 70 are both referenced in the assesment schedule, with values of the mean calculated for each. It's a workaround, not a fix.
2020 NCEA Level 2 – Algebra. A look at the excellence questions, which feature a lot of "find the conditions" and "find the requirements" questions. And the assessment schedule, like the Statistics one, shows signs of tweaking after the exam was sat. Yay, NCEA!
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2021
2021 NCEA Level 2 – Algebra. Basically another "rectangle with negative height" problem, but this one is deliberate and even has instructions that mislead students into thinking checking answers is not expected or required. Yay, NCEA!
2021 NCEA Level 2 – Calculus. A tricky equal-area proof which emphasises the importance of clear working.
NCEA Level 3 Maths exams
- 2021 NCEA Level 3 Mathematics.
Review of the excellence questions of the three exams:
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