Unit A453: Programming project

Controlled assessment: 30% of the total GCSE - 45 marks

The marks are broken down as follows:

• Programming Techniques - 18 marks
  • Use of programming techniques - 6 marks
  • Efficient use of programming techniques - 12 marks
• Design - 9 marks
• Development - 9 marks
• Testing and evaluation - 9 marks

Duration: Approx 20 hours

Programming tasks set by OCR that enable candidates to design, develop and test a solution to a problem.

• OCR will issue a range of practical assessment tasks each consisting of up to three sub-tasks.
• Students will need to create suitable algorithms which will provide a solution to the stated problem then code their solutions in a suitable programming language.
• The solutions must be tested at each stage to ensure they solve the stated problem using a suitable test plan with appropriate test data. The code must be suitably annotated to describe the process. Test results should be annotated to show how these relate to the code, the test plan and the original problem.
• Students will need to provide an evaluation of their solution based on the test evidence.

This controlled assessment is to be taken under Medium Control meaning students must complete all work, with the exception of research, under informal supervision. Informal supervision means that the teacher must be able to authenticate the work as the students’ own unaided work.

A candidate can re-take a controlled assessment but any work that has been previously assessed cannot be returned to the candidate and, along with moderated work returned to centres, should be destroyed.  Candidates may re-use any controlled assessment group research work but must completely redo the individual activity part of the assessment.

The current sets of A453 assessment tasks can be downloaded by logging onto OCR Interchange.

• Programming project Specimen Controlled Assessment Material 2010/11 pilot (PDF file)

• Exemplar material (provided by Darren Travi)