Computer Studies / Computing

Assessment

Computer systems written examination – 40% of A Level Algorithms and programming written examination – 40% of A Level Programming project – 20% of A Level Computer systems (Component 01) Learners answer all the questions. There will be a mix of questions including short answer, longer answer and some higher tariff questions that will test the quality of extended responses. The whole of the Computer Systems content will be covered over the life of the specification. Questions may contain, for example, following and correcting algorithms and programs, software development and legal and moral issues. Algorithms and programming (Component 02) Learners answer all the questions in Section A and all questions in Section B. There will be a mix of questions including short answer, longer answer and some higher tariff questions that will test the quality of written responses via a level of response mark scheme. The whole of the Algorithms and programming content will be covered over the life of the specification. Section A will contain questions which may cover writing algorithms and computational methods, programming and programming techniques and problem solving. These questions may contain some shorter answer questions. Section B will have a scenario set at the start of the section; this will contain information that will be used for the questions that follow. The questions will be largely of a higher tariff with problem solving algorithms and programming again forming the basis. Programming project (Component 03) The programming project will be submitted in the form of a report that will contain the solution to a problem, selected by the learner or centre, written in a suitable programming language. Within the report the learner must demonstrate their ability to analyse, design, develop, test and document using the principles learnt in computational thinking. The report will be marked internally by the centre. The language used at NSB is Python.