Assessment overview
There are six teaching topics and a practical skills topic:
- B1: Cell level systems
- B2: Scaling up
- B3: Organism level systems
- B4: Community level systems
- B5: Genes, inheritance and selection
- B6: Global challenges
- B7: Practical skills
Foundation tier (grades 5 to 1)
Higher tier (grades 9 to 4)
Students must complete either the foundation tier (paper 1 and paper 2) or the higher tier (paper 3 and paper 4) to be awarded the OCR GCSE (9-1) in Biology A (Gateway Science).
Content overview
Students develop their understanding of how the ideas of biology can describe the complex and diverse phenomena of the natural world in terms of a small number of key ideas which are of universal application.
The topics are:
- B1: Cell level systems
- Cell structures
- What happens in cells (and what do cells need)?
- Respiration
- Photosynthesis
- B2: Scaling up
- Supplying the cell
- The challenges of size
- B3: Organism level systems
- Coordination and control – the nervous system
- Coordination and control – the endocrine system
- Maintaining internal environments
- B4: Community level systems
- B5: Genes, inheritance and selection
- Inheritance
- Natural selection and evolution
- B6: Global challenges
- Monitoring and maintaining the environment
- Feeding the human race
- Monitoring and maintaining health
- B7: Practical skills
- A practical-based topic which provides students with the skills required for the 15% practical content in the examinations
- Students complete at least eight practical activities and have the opportunity to use all the apparatus and techniques listed in the specifications
- This will include awareness of safety procedures and the use of appropriate scientific diagrams to record apparatus and procedures
- Practical skills are embedded within all the teaching topics C1 to C6.