okay so i just got out of my AS physics practical and i need to talk about this because i feel like im going insane
so the way P3 works is they alternate students between Q1 and Q2, each question gets 1 hour. sounds fine on paper right. its not.
Q1 was a graph question. long, tedious, you had to take readings and then plot everything carefully. Q2 was way shorter, most people were done in like 30 minutes easily.
now here's where it gets actually unfair. students who got Q1 first — even if they didnt finish drawing the graph in their hour — still had all their readings taken. so when they moved to Q2, knocked it out in 30 mins, they had spare time left and could go back to Q1 and attempt the parts AFTER the graph. and the thing is those parts dont even require the graph to be completed first so they could just do them.
students who got Q2 first (me) finished early, sat there staring at the wall because regulations dont let you do anything with that time, then moved to Q1 with a "fresh" hour that was no different from anyone elses hour.
same exam. same total time. but one group got a second shot at the hard question and the other didnt. how is that okay
i dunno maybe im overreacting but it genuinely feels like your result depended on a coin flip today more than actual ability and that shouldn't happen in an exam this important
if you were affected by this please please raise it with your exams officer and email CIE directly. drop a comment too so we can see how many people this actually hit. the more of us that speak up the harder it is for them to ignore it