Exam board AQA has sparked outrage among GCSE geography students who say they spent hours revising case studies for Monday’s exam, only to be asked about dishwasher sales.
Hundreds of pupils have vented their frustration about the paper, which they claimed only included one three-mark-question about case studies, on Twitter.
“Glad I revised all my case studies for AQA to ask me why people are buying more dishwashers,” one student complained.
Another wrote: “Dear exam writers, I revised over 10 case studies so why did you ask me about freaking dishwashers?”
Provided with statistics about UK population growth and changing levels of dishwasher ownership over time, students were asked to outline why “the demand for water is likely to increase in the future”.
While a spokesperson for the exam board said the two-mark question was about water sustainability, many pupils felt it was unfair to be asked about dishwashers when so few questions about case studies were reportedly included:
A spokesperson for AQA further defended the paper, pointing out that the instructions on the front of the exam inform students that they can “use case studies to support your answers where appropriate”.
“It’s completely normal for students to tweet about their exams,” they told HuffPost UK.
“We only ever ask questions about things that are covered in the syllabus - but we can’t ask questions about everything on the syllabus, so students will always end up revising topics that don’t come up.”
The GCSE Geography test is not the first time AQA has caused controversy during this year’s exam season.
Last week, the exam board hit headlines for asking GCSE Biology students why Darwin was drawn as a monkey - a question pupils complained was not on the curriculum.