OCR has announced that there will be two changes to the assessment of unit G543 – Options in Applied Psychology and that these changes will come into effect for the January 2011 examination series.
There have been many criticisms of the demands of this A2 options paper and OCR has responded to these points. These criticisms have been discussed thoroughly on psychexchange.co.uk, on the OCR e-list, at the ATP conference and many teachers have written to the board explaining their concerns.
Firstly, the exam duration will be increased from 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours. Most teachers and students will welcome this change as this means that students now have 30 minutes to answer each of the four questions rather than 22.5 minutes. This small increase should allow for the questions to be better discriminators of the students’ ability to answer the questions and at least give the students some thinking/preparation time in the exam room.
Secondly, and probably more importantly, OCR now maintain that for each option at least three out of the four topics (areas) will be covered in the exam. Meaning, that teachers will only have to teach three of the four topics in each of the two chosen options – as at least three of the four topics will appear in the exam. This of course means that the content has been reduced by 25% and will be welcomed by learners and teachers.
The Notice To Centres can be downloaded here http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/notices/ocr_32153_notices_gce.pdf
Cara Flanagan has j
ust 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.
OCR has announced that it is to run two ‘Lead the Way’ events which will focus on the two new A2 units G543 and G544.
There will be sessions with the Principal Examiners focusing on aspects of the new A2 specification but the theme for the afternoon is “Psychology in Action”. Experts from the fields of forensic, clinical, sport and educational psychology have been invited to speak with the aim that it will broaden teachers’ understanding of the applied section of the course.
There are two dates
London (22nd May)
Leeds (5th June).
The early booking rate is £205 and more details and booking forms can be found here.
The OCR web site is running a psychology free prize draw.
The prize is a Bozo doll, similar to the original Bobo doll used in the Bandura, Ross and Ross (1961) core study.
All you have to do to win one of the 25 inflatable dolls is to fill in a form by clicking on Bozo the clown below.
Good luck.
Jamie is giving away a free copy of the newish Banyard and Grayson book to celebrate psychblog.co.uk being a year old. (I refuse to call it a Birthday though Jamie) To have a chance of winning this excellent book all you have to do is go over to his site and register.
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.
