With the support of JISC (part of the Higher Education Funding Council of England) www.theFaculties.org has made approximately 300 films of lecturers speaking on themes and topics from the A-level curriculum.

More than 30 of those themes are in Psychology  – see www.thepsychologyfaculty.org  More will follow in the coming weeks. The videos also offer advice to A-level students about where they might study Psychology at University, and about the careers that can follow their degree. .

Although this resource has only just been launched it is promised that in time it will cover the entire UK A-level curriculum. It is possible on the site for Psychology teachers and students to suggest further topics and ways in which the expertise of academic Psychologists can be employed in the secondary school classroom.

www.thepsychologyfaculty.org

The blog for the Complete Companion which provides extra stuff that they cannot squeeze into their books as well as providing extra resources, updates on research and answers to questions, now has a forum.

The forum allows further discussion of AQA A related issues; especially important as we are seeing much change in the specifications.

Check it out here

http://www.oxfordschoolblogs.co.uk/psychcompanion/blog/community/

Cara Flanagan has just posted a comparison table of pass rates for the different boards on the new Folens blog here (which by the way also looks pretty good; I’ve subscribed)

The key comment from her psychexchange forum post is:

The fact that the different boards probably do attract slightly different cohorts mean that direct comparisons are not possible but there are certainly some major differences in pass rates.

AS – May 25th 2011 Wednesday am

WJEC    PY1    (1h 15m)
OCR    G541   (1h 00m)
Edexcel    Unit 1 (1h 20m)
AQA (A)  PSYA1 (1h 30m)
AQA (B)  PSYB2  (1h 30m)

AS – June 7th 2011 Tuesday pm

AQA (A)  PSYA1 (1h 30m)
AQA (B)  PSB2  (1h 30m)
Edexcel    Unit 2 (1h 40m)
OCR    G542  (2h 00m)
WJEC    PY2     (1h 45m)

A2 – June 17th 2011 Friday pm

AQA (A) PSYA3 (1h 30m)
AQA (B) PSYB3 (2h 00m)
WJEC    PY3   (1h 30m)
OCR    G543    (1h 30m)
Edexcel    Unit 3    (1h 30m)

A2 – June 21st 2011 Tuesday am

AQA (A)  PSYA4 (2h 00m)
AQA (B) PSYB4  (2h 00m)
OCR   G544    (1h 30m)
Edexcel    Unit 4 (2h 00m)
WJEC    PY4  (2h 30m)

All of the dates and times were kindly provided by www.modernisationonline.org.uk

January 2010 exams are here.

AS -   January 12th 2011  Wednesday am

Edexcel Unit 1 (1h 20m)
AQA (A)  PSYA1 (1h 30m)
WJEC PY1 (1 h 15m)
OCR G541 (1h 00m)
AQA (B)  PSYB1 (1h 30m)

AS -  January 19th 2011 Wednesday am

AQA (A) PSYA2 (1h 30m)
WJEC PY2 (1 h 45m)
OCR G542 (2h 00m)
AQA (B) PSYB2 (1h 30m)
Note that Edexcel do not offer unit 2 in January

A2 January 28th 2011 Friday am

Edexcel Unit 3 (1h 30m)
AQA (A) PSYA3 (1h 30m)
WJEC PY3 (1 h 30m)
OCR G543 (1h 30m)
AQA(B) PSYB3 (1h 30m)

February 2nd 2011 Wednesday pm

Edexcel Unit 4  (2h 00m)
AQA (A) PSYA4 (2h)
WJEC PY4 (2h 30m)
OCR G544  (1h 30m)
AQA (B)  PSYB4 (2h 00m)

All of the dates and times were kindly provided by www.modernisationonline.org.uk

GCSE exams coming soon and GCE summer exam are here.

AQA is having to re-set Psychology exam papers due to be sat on the 16th May.

Following a theft of a Parcel Force van containing exam papers AQA has re-set a number of its GCE and GCSE exam papers. The Parcel Force van was stolen in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, on 15 April.

The van was later found with some parcels still inside and some nearby. Some of the exam papers were recovered, but a number were missing.

AQA said that the loss of just one exam paper from a set could mean the exam was compromised so it took the decision to replace the papers nationally.

Among the exam papers were the AS psychology papers PYA1, PYA2 and PYA3.

Stolen AQA exam papers included GCE Business Studies, Biology Specification A, Computing, French, Modern Hebrew, History of Art, ICT, Law, Media Studies, Psychology Specification A, Sociology and Spanish.

Furthermore GCSE English Specification A and English Literature Specification A were stolen.

Here is the letter sent out to all centres from AQA

In their statement AQA noted that “incidents like this are extremely rare” although they fail to mention that a similar incident did occur fairly recently in April 2004 (see BBC 2004). Perhaps the days of sending exam papers via Parcel Force vans are numbered.

For psychology, candidates currently working towards their AS exams in May, and A2 exams in July there will still be a number of opportunities for re-sits.

AS re-sits will be available in January 2009 and then the following May 2009. No more re-sits of the current AS psychology exams will be available after May 2009.

A2 re-sits will be available in January 2009, June 2009, January 2010 and June 2010.

Of course, only those units that are normally offered in January will be available in January.

For those psychology candidates studying the new specifications, the A2 units will not be available for examination until 2010, which means that candidates cannot complete the full A level in the first year of the new specifications.

Furthermore, the units from the current (legacy) specifications cannot be combined with units from the new specifications.

The draft 2009 psychology GCSE specifications from OCR and AQA have been published.

The drafts have to be submitted to the regulators in April 2008 and the specifications will be available from September 2008, with first teaching from September 2009.

Edexcel and WJEC have announced that they will offer GCSE psychology from 2009 but have not yet published their drafts.

The OCR GCSE draft psychology specifications are here

The AQA GCSE draft psychology specifications are here

Update – here is the link to Edexcel draft GCSE specifications

Update – here is the link to WJEC draft GCSE specifications

Steve Taylor from onlineclassroom.tv has kindly provided psychnews.co.uk with an excellent DVD to give away as a prize.

Classic Studies in Psychology 1 is a best selling, smashing DVD, which consists of a five short video programmes designed to give teachers the flexibility to integrate illustrative video material into their lessons. This compact DVD features original footage, up to date expert analysis and reinforcing graphics to bring five major studies to life.

The five classic studies include the Strange Situation, Bandura on Social Learning, Loftus on Eye Witness Testimony, Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment.

To win the DVD is very easy really. All you have to do is subscribe to this site (psychnews.co.uk) by entering your email into the box on the right and following a link in your email which activates your subscription.  You will then be entered into the free draw.

On April 30th your email will be picked out (somehow randomly – although I am not quite sure which random method I should use – suggestions welcome) and give the lucky recipient a week to reply to the email. If this recipient does not reply, I will do the same random procedure again until somebody wins the classic studies psychology 1 DVD.

I promise that the winner will not be an employee of psychnews (psychnews doesn’t have any employees) or any member of psychnews’ family (as nobody related to psychnews reads this blog as far as I know).

Anybody who already subscribes to this site will automatically be entered into the prize draw although you could always subscribe again with an alternative email to double your chance of winning the prize. Obviously all email addresses will have to be genuine for this crafty way of winning to work.

There is a review of the DVD here.

If you teach AQA (A) psychology you may be already aware of this site. Keiron Walsh has developed alevelpsychology.co.uk The site has a blog, lots of free resources and my favourite – Resource of the Week.

Do have a look around the website.

This post could also be an opprtunity for teachers to add any AQA psychology blogs to the comments for other teachers to enjoy.