Additional assessment materials for summer 21 available for schools and colleges

We've today published additional assessment materials to help teachers decide grades for students taking our qualifications. Our materials cover 475 OCR qualifications, including GCSEs, AS and A Levels, Cambridge Nationals, Cambridge Technicals, as well as Core Maths and FSMQ.

The materials have been published on our Grade Submission System which we used in 2020. The use of these additional assessment materials is optional; they may help you fill a gap in the evidence you have to determine a student's grade or to validate an existing assessment. They can be used flexibly, as a class or homework activity, or as a test for example.

The additional assessment materials are sets of questions across all subjects (except art and design) made up of a range of exam questions and past papers over a minimum of three years. The sets of questions allow you to focus on areas of a specification that you have taught. Alongside the questions, there are relevant mark schemes and also mapping grids. The mapping grids link to assessment objectives and highlight the content or skills covered within a question. This should make it easier for you to find the material most useful for you. We've also provided the question sets in an editable format so you can tailor them to fit your needs. We've also published general marking guidance, as well as subject-specific guidance, to help you make the best use of the additional assessment materials.

To find out how to download materials from the Grade Submission System, please see our support page. Teachers will need to speak to 'centre admin' about access. This is usually your exams officer.

What's next? (The section below was updated on 12 April 2021)

31 March: as well as publishing additional assessment materials on our Grade Submission System, we've published grade descriptors on our public website. These are general statements giving a high-level reflection of student performance at a number of grades.

12 April: we will publish performance data and marking exemplars alongside the additional assessment materials on the Grade Submission System. On 19 April, we will publish OCR-specific exemplification of the grade descriptors on our Grade Submission System, using real student responses to past papers and NEA where available.

Please note that from 19 April, our additional assessment materials (without mark schemes) and grade descriptors will be available to students on our public website. We've created a finder so students can download a zip file of questions based on past exams.