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Edexcel Politics A2 (Route B)

How did everyone find it? Did you do unit 4 and 5? I just did unit 5 (we did unit 4 in January, though the majority of people re-sat it today).

I though the questions were quite nice. Despite being told we should avoid doing any question on fascism as we've hardly done anything on it, but I did the short question on it. All it involved really was remembering what the Heywood books said about anti-rationalism and fascism. Also did the question about liberalism and nationalism, where I talked about Rouseau's 'popular sovereignty', how nations are treated the same as individuals (as in each nation should take control of its own destiny), and how the creation of independent naiton-states in coincidence with a free market promotes liberal ideas of brotherhood and universalism. Finally, I did the anarchism essay question. The essay question was OK, though I think I made a few structural errors as I only mentioned Proudhons mutualism in the conclusion (which seemed like a good idea at the time), and that was rather brief.

Reply 1

Sophdoph

Wow that sounds better than my fascism answer.

Found the 1st paper easier than 2nd. Like the liberal democracy question, did the anarchism q as my long one on 2nd and was OK I guess. Short qs were suprisingly hard I thought.

Am very worried about unit 6!!

Reply 2

jossy

i did the question on socialism and nationalism because i had a hunch it would come up- i looked at the past papers and realised it hadn't come up for a number of years, so i desperately put together a plan for it, and went through it with my teacher, it did! i was very lucky! we did unit 4 in january so i only had to do paper 5, it wasn't that terrible a paper, although there was a lot of rambling to construct the short question answers!! briiing on unit 6! two weeks worth of teaching so i'm not feeling prepared at all! there is extreme last minute cramming going on in my house!! hows everyone else feeling about it?

Reply 3

kingslaw

I'm not particuarily looking forward to Unit 6. However, I'm in the same position as I was for Unit 3 last year (2/3 weeks of teaching), and I came out with my highest mark in that paper. Also, I've taken a lot of marks from AS and Unit 4, so I was way above an A before going into Unit 5 and 6, so I'm not so nervous about it. As long as I get a B in this paper, I should be on course for an A overall still.

Plus, my tutor says I have an ability to make a long-winded ramble look like a mature, intelligent arguement, which she believes should help in Unit 6! Which areas of Unit 6 is everyone doing? We've only been taught the Labour Party and socialism, and the changing nature of British Conservatism. So our choices of question to answer come tomorrow is going to be very limited!

Reply 4

Sophdoph

We've done it all but really really briefly! I don't feel sure about any of the topics. Any net links to past qs or mark schemes?

Reply 5

jossy

none sorry! just try and learn as many essays as possible before tommorow, the paper is obv. split into four topics, socialism liberalism nationalism and conservatism, and basically the trend is that there is a question on each every year. the socialism question has always been a variation on how is the labour party socialist, and the liberalism questions seem to follow the trend of either 'how liberal are the three main parties of the uk', 'how liberal is the uk system of government' and 'how do blair's reforms satisfy liberal thinkers' nationalism is usually about where the sources of nationalism are found in the uk....conservatism i'm leaving out, but they could ask you to compare old and new labour and they could also ask you if both the lab and the conservative parties are conservative. hope that's helped

Reply 6

kingslaw

Sophdoph

We've done it all but really really briefly! I don't feel sure about any of the topics. Any net links to past qs or mark schemes?

Here are some past/specimen papers, mark schemes and examiners reports: http://www.edexcel.org.uk/qualifications/QualificationAward.aspx?id=48481

Feeling quite confident on the Labour question as I've learnt that (on my own) to quite a lot of depth and had a natural interest in the development of the socialist ideology anyway. However, the Conservatives question is another thing altogether...