Tough A-level chemistry exam sparks Twitter tears

The last question on the paper was particularly tough, say candidates and their teachers

Distressed A-level chemistry students have taken to Twitter after exam questions they claim strayed outside the syllabus.

Some candidates said they were in tears after the paper - and almost 100 have written to exam board OCR to complain.

The last question, on a technique known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), left many students stumped.

An OCR spokesman said the final question was "designed to be one of the most demanding".

'Worst paper'

The spokesman said the difficulty of the paper would be taken into account when the board came to set grade boundaries during the marking process.

One student described himself as "gobsmacked! speechless!!", fearing his university place would be in doubt unless the next paper was better.

"Without a doubt the worst paper I have ever sat and I'm not exaggerating. It was awful," said another.

One student asked if OCR accepted tears as answers.

Candidates were given the chemical structure of a particular compound and asked to work out the structure of a "product" following a reaction.

"It was a novel question, NMR is well known and well prepared for and is notoriously difficult," said one chemistry teacher.

"This was a level up," he added. But he said "some students got it right!"

Another said he was feeling sorry for his students as the exam was "way beyond A-level standard" on two out of the four questions.

The OCR spokesman said the question had been designed to get students to apply their knowledge of the topic.

"As the final question on the chemistry paper, this is also designed to be one of the most demanding.

"Whilst the question is challenging, we need to reassure candidates that question papers are intended to include questions across a range of difficulties.

"The relative difficulty of a whole paper, in comparison with previous years' papers, is always taken into account when grade boundaries are set."

Last week students took to Twitter to complain about a difficult GCSE maths paper. Earlier this week others celebrated a relatively easy GCSE chemistry paper.