Oh, so the core is important?
I've managed to get by with minimal study and haven't lost more than a mark on the core - should i spend a bit more time on the core or spend it on my options?
I should've gone to the HTA lectures to get tips for modern T.T
If you are getting 24/25 for the Core you will be fine.
Just because it is the section used to moderate the rest of the paper doesn't mean that students need to spend extra time on it as the moderation isn't on a case by case basis but on a question by question basis.
In other words if you get 24/25 for the Core that doesn't mean that they will take the rest of your paper to that mark but if the mean, median and standard deviation for all students doing the Ireland option for instance is considerable different to the same stats against the Core and to all the other options in that part of the paper then they will moderate the Irish questions to be similar to the others.
To put is simply and just use one criterion (they use a range of criteria) take the mean - mean for students who do Ireland on the Core was 16 but on the Ireland questions it was 8 but for the students doing South Africa the mean on the Core was also 16 but on the South Africa question their mean was 14 the computer would adjust the Ireland marks upwards (assuming range, median and standard deviation were the same for both groups).