Coursework
Last updated on: 18/03/2009
Coursework is part of GCSE and A level qualifications in most subjects. It can include a wide range of activities, including practical work and projects.
In 2005, we published a review of GCE and GCSE coursework, which evaluated its effectiveness as part of these qualifications. We canvassed the views of a wide spectrum of stakeholders including students, teachers, parents, senior examiners and moderators, and awarding body staff. They agreed that coursework is indeed valuable for assessing skills and knowledge that are harder to assess through written examination papers. It is also a powerful motivator for many candidates, since it gives them a chance to study an area in greater depth and to take more responsibility for their own learning.
Our study found that many improvements need to be made, namely:
- ensuring teachers can confirm that work they mark is the candidate's own. We recommended that there should be further research into using technology to detect plagiarism
- clarifying what help from teachers and parents is acceptable
- giving a higher profile to malpractice penalties
- standardising marks within a centre to ensure that internal standardisation is consistent across all centres. Our recommendation is that awarding bodies need to carry out further checks and provide better guidance
- clarifying the purpose and format of feedback from moderators to meet centres' needs
- looking at the value of coursework assessment subject by subject to improve the way in which coursework is designed and assessed in the future.
We established a taskforce to look at how we could strengthen arrangements for the authentication of coursework for the summer 2006 examinations series. The work of this taskforce led to the publication, in March 2006, of teachers' guidance on authenticating coursework. We also produced guidelines for parents and candidates to explain clearly the difference between legitimate family support for coursework and excessive parental input or plagiarism.
Controlled assessments
Changes to controlled assessments will come into effect with the new GCSE criteria, with first teaching in September 2009.
- Controlled assessments will be taken under supervised conditions and will either be set by the awarding body and marked by teachers or be set by teachers and marked by the awarding body
- Controlled assessments may involve different parameters from those used in traditional written examinations. They may, for example, allow access to sources such as the internet, but under supervision
- Coursework for science will remain unchanged, as a revised programme of study at GCSE was introduced in September 2006.
There are three models for controlled assessments.
i) In this model there is no controlled assessment, with all work externally assessed
ii) In this model 25% of work comes under controlled assessment, with 75% externally assessed, the focus being stronger on external assessment
iii) In this model 60% comes under controlled assessment, with 40% externally assessed, with a stronger focus on controlled assessment.
In the following subjects all work will be assessed externally: classical greek, economics, latin, law, psychology religious studies, sociology. This remains the case in mathematics where coursework was removed in 2007. These follow model i).
Controlled assessments apply in the following subjects, with a stronger focus on external assessment: business studies, citizenship studies, classical civilisation, English literature, geography, history, humanities, and statistics. These follow model ii).
Controlled assessments will have a stronger focus than external assessment in the following subjects: applied business, art and design, construction, dance, design and technology, drama, engineering, English, English Language, expressive arts, health and social care, home economics, hospitality and catering, ICT, leisure and tourism, manufacturing, media studies, modern foreign languages, music, physical education. These follow model iii).
The new controlled assessments are introduced according to the newly published GCSE criteria, which can be found here.
We published a report, Controlled assessments, which includes an explanation of the process of developing controlled assessment and case study examples in different GCSE subjects and should be read in conjunction with the revised GCSE criteria. The development of controlled assessment and related topics are described in more detail in the independent report, Improving GCSE: internal and controlled assessment. Both reports can be downloaded from this page.