An A-level maths exam left students “devastated” after what they said were unexpected changes to the style and questions . They claimed exam board WJEC changed the exam format without telling anyone with questions and topics they’d not been taught or told to prepare for.

Jakub Koptalek, from Ysgol Elias in Colywn Bay, said he and others were “gutted” coming out of the WJEC A-level maths unit three exam. He said it wasn’t the school but the exam board’s fault for not preparing anyone for the changes.

“The entire style of questions was different to any previous papers and the way we were taught to answer questions. I would say 40% of the questions were asked in a way which all of us were unfamiliar with," the 18 year-old said. The WJEC has already warned that A-level and GCSE results will be lower this year and you can read why that is here.

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The WJEC said it had introduced a new layout to the exam papers with the exam in the form of question and answer booklets. The exam board said schools and colleges were notified of this change in September 2023 and examples made available so students were familiar with the change.

Jakub said his teachers had not been made aware of the changes and neither had he or classmates at Ysgol Elias before they sat the exam on June 4. "I felt absolutely gutted coming out of the exam as did everyone else sitting the paper," the teenager said. "I’ve heard off my friends that they did the same sort of thing with the AS further maths unit one exam where the paper was again a completely different style to anything they had seen before."

Candidates who sat the exam shared their feelings on social media. A flurry of responses followed jaxie123 asking on Reddit : “Did anyone just sit this exam?” and commenting “everyone came out traumatised”.

Responses included: “Yeah it was absolutely hellish” and "Disgusting tbh”. TodayGoldfish10 responded: “Hardly any of the questions followed previous years' layout.”

Some hoped the poor performance of so many would mean grade boundaries would be low. But some didn’t agree. User @oscarthomas06 responded to complaints shared on X by saying: ”Anyone who’s moaning about WJEC A-level maths unit three paper should’ve revised.”

Jakub's mother Marta said her son and his friends were “devastated" and added: "They think all their hard work is wasted. They say it was completely unfair and they were not prepared for this new style of exam. They were not prepared to answer the new style of questions.

“As far as I am aware Tuesday’s A-level maths paper contained questions on topics that have been not taught. The WJEC should make it clear what topics will need to be covered at the beginning of academic year. And if they decide to change a style of questions it must be known to teachers as well. At the end of the day they are the ones responsible for what has been delivered however they’re not the ones to be blamed for paper mistakes.

“I hope this won’t happen again for future A-level as well as AS-level students, as we all remember the 2022 maths exam fiasco. All the teachers in my son’s school have been fantastic and very supportive.”

Jakub, 18, hopes he will still get the two A* grades and one A he needs to go to the University of Manchester which is his first choice. He’s taking physics and psychology A-levels along with maths.

A WJEC spokesman said: "We take a great deal of care to ensure that examinations are fair and assess only the subject content which is included in our specifications. We can confirm that all of the topics within the A-level mathematics exam were from the specification content.

"Examinations always include a range of questions, some of which are more challenging than others, so that we can effectively differentiate across the whole grade range and award a fair grade to each student. We also consider past assessments when writing papers to ensure that each year’s examinations are comparable so that no students are advantaged or disadvantaged in comparison with previous cohorts.

"When all the examinations are marked senior examiners carefully consider students’ responses and set grade boundaries accordingly. If we find, for example, that one year’s paper was slightly more demanding than a previous year the grade boundaries we set will take account of that.

"As with previous years the style of the questions presented remained consistent. However we have introduced a new layout to the examination papers whereby the examination would take the form of question-answer booklets. Schools and colleges were notified of this change in September 2023. In addition exemplars were also made available to ensure that learners were familiar with this change.”