I don't get all this praise on this subject. The AS exam is tomorrow, here is my experience of OCR Computer Science over the last two years.
OCR is a joke. Literally a joke. Last year, they CHANGED the SPECIFICATION literally 3 DAYS after the exam, and again in January with no indication of what was changed unless you called the exam board - about a two-week reply to say they didn't know either. The 'subject specialists' are also basically frauds. Grade boundaries were also rock-bottom, with around 40% scoring you an A - Just shows how bad the entire country was at this exam! I'm sure you've also heard about the other messed up exams they've done this year at GCSE level? God knows how this board are allowed to operate in this country.
When it comes to the project, the average amount of time you'd get is maybe 6 months, depending on when your teacher starts it. Because of how bad last year went (Out of 12 people, only 3 gained a C or above, me not included) we wanted to confirm with the exam board with written proof that our projects were good enough to go. This is where Robert Leeman comes in. I don't know anybody in my class that didn't take the piss out of this guy, just at how slow he was to reply (two weeks on a good day!) and how utterly useless his replies were! He judged our projects all on complexity, many of the replies we get literally just saying "not complex enough" with no ideas on improvements. After we looked at the mark scheme, there was physically no mention on complexity, meaning we wasted so much time with this guy it gave us two months left to complete these projects - I basically lied my way through this with the most broken code you'll ever see to the point only one thing actually worked in it, still scored 52/70 unmoderated thanks to my write-up and 'bull shiting skills'.
The course itself isn't too hard to learn, although I do also struggle with different aspects of it, to be expected without taking a GCSE course on computer science - my previous school did not have one. My teacher told us about a conference with Vinay Thawait, another subject specialist of the course. He didn't know what he was talking about, and apparently, no other teacher at this conference really cared too much either. When it came to questions, my teacher was the only one to actually ask anything, question after question, Thawait being utterly disinterested in anything asked and obviously wanted to just leave.
Can I also add that this is the only exam board to offer NO PAST OR SPECIMINE PAPERS widely available to students? The only way to access anything is either through a teacher login where there is ONLY ONE EXAMPLE of each paper or through third party sources which don't know any better themselves. All I've got is a poorly-written textbook full of mistakes, grammatical errors and more...
I don't think I've ever taken a course so unorganised, so problematic and stressful as this! It also doesn't help that this was also the first two years of it being run, another cause for disaster in this subject. I don't think I'll pass these two exams which are the most disheartening part of it all, which has limited my future and put me under a lot of pressure, something I do not want or need. Last year I scored an E. I've got 20% now done with the project complete which does help a little, now to complete two 2:30 papers and hope for the best.