The Edexcel A level Biology exam board offers two different specifications so make sure you revise for the correct one as the two specifications, Edexcel A (Salters-Nuffield) and Edexcel B, are quite different from each other. The following outlines the structure of the Edexcel A level Biology exams.
Paper 1: The Natural Environment and Species Survival
·This paper covers:Topic 1: Lifestyle, Health and Risk, Topic 2: Genes and Health Topic 3: Voice of the Genome, Topic 4: Biodiversity and Natural Resources Topic 5: On the Wild Side Topic 6: Immunity, Infection and Forensics.
·33.33% of the qualification
·Assessment is 2 hours
·100 marks.
·A mixture of question types including maths skills questions, which will represent at least 10% of the mark.
Paper 2: Energy, Exercise and Co-ordination
·Topics Covered: Topic 1: Lifestyle, Health and Risk, Topic 2: Genes and Health, Topic 3: Voice of the Genome, Topic 4: Biodiversity and Natural Resources, Topic 7: Run for your Life, Topic 8: Grey Matter.
·33.33% of the qualification
·2 hours.
·100 marks.
·The paper may include multiple-choice as well as short and long answer questions. The maths questions will represent at least 10% of the overall mark of the paper.
Paper 3: General and Practical Applications in Biology
·This paper will include questions from topics 1-8. A scientific article will be pre-released on the OCR website 8 weeks before the examination and students should read through this article to make sure they have good prior knowledge of it before the exam. The pre-released scientific article will underpin one section of the paper.
·33.33% of the qualification
·2 hours
·100 marks.
·The paper will include long and short synoptic questions and will again have at least 10% of the marks attributed to maths skills questions.
Students will have to undertake required practicals that can be assessed in any or all the three exam papers.