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Design and Technology AQA - Question related to marking

Now in this year, the NEA was actually involved with the marking. I did really good on my NEA got more than 50% on it, whereas on the exam it was bit unexpected with a few questions - not sure If I got them correct, anyways, for the overall grade will they combine my paper mark with the my NEA mark for the grade? Just need some help involving how it'll be marked this year.

Reply 1

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

In a normal year, the NEA is out of 100 marks and the exam is out of 100 marks, and each represent 50% of the GCSE. So they simply add the marks together to get a final mark out of 200. (You comment that, "this year, the NEA was actually involved with the marking" implies that thought it isn't normally involved - it is.)

However, for this year they've tweaked the NEA slightly. Normally, its 100 marks come from these six sections:

Identifying & investigating design possibilities (10 marks)
Producing a design brief & specification (10 marks)
Generating design ideas (20 marks)
Developing design ideas (20 marks)
Realising design ideas (20 marks)
Analysing & evaluating (20 marks)

However, this year the "Realising design ideas" section was reduced from 20 to 10 marks (as you weren't required to actually make a final prototype). Similarly, the "Analysing and evaluating" section was reduced from 20 to 15 marks (as you weren't required to test a final made prototype - given that there's was requirement to make it).

The NEA is therefore out of 85 marks this year - but still represents 50% of the exam. They do this by scaling the 85 marks (i.e. multiplying it by 100/85) before adding it to the score from the exam. This works in your favour, if you did better in the NEA than the exam, as each NEA mark is worth slightly more than each exam mark.

See the "Assessment criteria" on this page for the normal section breakdown of the NEA, and this document for confirmation of the changes - including that "There are no planned changes to the exam" and that "NEA will still count as 50% of the overall GCSE qualification". (The NEA changes are also summarised on this page.)