It’s of great concern to me that this year it took me a considerable amount of time to produce a solution for this N5 task. It’s somehow reassuring that it’s not only me that thinks that there are issues with it. In a normal year, I would expect to bash out a working solution in under 30 minutes, this year I probably took closer to 2 hours to figure out what was expected and write the corresponding code. It was quite a contrast to the straightforward nature of the higher assignment. I feel so sorry for the pupils that are going to have to try their best to get through this.

This assignment is not ‘fit for purpose’ IMO, if teachers cannot see a clear pathway through it then how could a pupil?

It is ridiculous for the Higher to ‘feel easier’ or be quicker to solve.

I’m going to set my Highers the N5 challenge when we have their coursework out of the way to get their feedback on it, I’m suspicious they will find ambiguity in the design even though they are totally comfortable with 1D and 2D arrays.