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Assessment in GCSE Sciences

What's changed?

GCSE Sciences are being brought into line with other GCSE subjects by having Controlled Assessment rather than coursework. If you have been with AQA for a while, you won't notice as much change as our Investigative Skills Assignments (ISAs) are already very similar to Controlled Assessment and therefore represent a fully tested approach to this mandatory element of the new specifications.

Controlled Assessment has specified levels of control at each stage of the task:

1. task setting – we write the task

2. task taking – you supervise the students when they are taking the task

3. task marking – we give you marking guidelines

What other changes are there?

  • flexibility and choice are still inbuilt but there are some rule changes for ISAs
  • for GCSE Science and Additional Science you will have the option to assess by subject or to use combined assessment
  • all written papers will have closed questions, structured questions and questions needing longer answers, which means no more external assessment by objective tests only
  • on-screen assessment will be an option for some units

Written assessments will be available in January and June (with the exception of Science B which assesses in November, March and June).

To read subject specific information related to assessments please visit our subject pages.

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