GCSE examinations project
Aim
SCORE's overall objective of this strand of work was to provide reliable information on the fitness for purpose of GCSE science examination papers, focusing on how the examination papers assess particular aspects of GCSE science.
This project was concerned with looking at the performance of the assessments. It does not provide any evidence on the performance of the students.
Description
The scope of this work covered the following issues:
- Accuracy of the science: whether the science in the exam questions and mark schemes was accurate.
- Mathematics: the extent and type of mathematics needed, and whether this was the same across the awarding bodies.
- How Science Works: the way in which How Science Works was assessed.
- Question type: the balance between question types in the examination papers.
- Knowledge required: whether any knowledge of science or How Science Works was required to answer the questions.
In order to investigate these issues, SCORE held a two-day workshop at which a panel of 15 expert teachers, examiners and scientists analysed a total of 79 examination papers – from AQA, Edexcel, OCR and WJEC examination boards.
An analysis ‘grid' was devised to capture data about each examination paper considered – the grids reflected those used by awarding bodies in the setting of examination papers. Following the workshop, the data and comments from all the grids were collated to provide a summary for each examination within each specification.
Key issues
Major findings included:
- The type and quantity of mathematics assessed was found to vary across discipline (biology, chemistry and physics) and type of paper (Core and Additional), with some papers found to have no marks awarded for mathematics.
- There were significant differences between awarding bodies regarding the amount of How Science Works in examination papers. Also, Core Science examination papers contained considerably more How Science Works than Additional Science papers.