OCR EPQ Guide
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Phase 0

Before you start

Set up your records and learn how the marks work before you choose a topic. Everything you do from now on needs somewhere to be recorded.

Assigned as
Task 2: Start an Activity Log
Task 5: Project Progression Record (initial idea)
Task 9: Identify Skills Required
Earns marks in
AO1 Manage, AO3 Develop and realise, AO4 Review
Your route

Moderators can only mark what they can see. Your Project Progression Record (PPR) and your activity log will hold most of your evidence of planning, decisions and reflection, so set them up before any project work starts. A skills audit done now is the starting point you measure your skill development against at the end.

Do this now

  1. Understand how you are marked

    1. Read the four assessment objectives on the start page. AO3, Develop and realise, is 24 of the 60 marks.
    2. Take in the main point: a good outcome with little evidence of how you got there scores low on AO1, AO2 and AO4, and loses much of AO3 as well.

  2. Set up your Project Progression Record

    The PPR is OCR's compulsory form for recording your project. It is submitted for moderation with your work. The PPR and activity log page explains every section and when to fill it in.

    1. Ask your supervisor for the PPR form your centre uses.
    2. Fill in the first part now: your name, candidate number, centre, and every qualification you are taking in the "Current programme of study" table (type, level and subject).
    3. Save it with your candidate number in the file name, for example 1234_PPR.
    4. Leave Project Topic, Rationale, and Aims and Objectives blank for now. You complete them in Phase 1.

  3. Start your activity log

    The activity log (OCR calls it a log or diary) is separate from the PPR. It is also required.

    1. Choose a format you will keep using: a dated document, a notebook, a spreadsheet or a project app. OCR does not require a particular template.
    2. Write an entry every time you work on the project or meet your supervisor, on the same day.
    3. Use the same four headings in every entry:
      • What I did
      • What went well or badly, and why
      • Decisions I made and why, including anything you changed
      • Next step
    4. After every supervisor meeting, write down what you discussed and what you decided. Your supervisor is only allowed to give you verbal feedback, so your log is the only record of it.

  4. Plan your five supervisor meetings

    OCR requires at least five in-person meetings with your supervisor:

    1. Proposing your topic.
    2. Initial planning, recorded in the PPR.
    3. Mid project review, recorded in the PPR.
    4. End of project review, recorded in the PPR.
    5. Your final presentation, given to your supervisor and an audience.

    Write them into your log now, and add the dates as soon as you know them.

  5. Do a skills audit

    1. List the skills every EPQ needs: planning and time management, finding sources, judging sources, referencing, note-taking and presenting.
      • Dissertation routeAdd the skills a long argument needs: reading academic sources, structuring chapters and writing a conclusion that answers a question.
      • Artefact routeAdd the practical skills your outcome might need, such as designing, making, coding, filming or organising people, plus writing a report of about 1,000 words.
      • If you have not chosen a route yet, list skills for both and cut the list down in Phase 1.
    2. Rate yourself on each one, for example from 1 to 5.
    3. For every rating of 3 or lower, write one sentence of evidence: a time it went wrong, or the fact that you have never done it.
    4. Choose two or three skills to improve during the project. Some of these can become objectives in Phase 1.
    5. Date the audit and keep it. You will rate yourself again at the end.

Record this for the marks

What a moderator needs to see from this phase, where it goes, and the assessment objective it counts towards.

PPR, first part
name, candidate number, centre, and the complete "Current programme of study" table.
AO1
Activity log
a first dated entry saying what you have set up and what you will do next.
AO1
Meetings
the five required meetings written into your log, with dates when you have them.
AO1
Skills audit
dated ratings, a sentence of evidence for each low rating, and the skills you chose to develop. This is the baseline for showing skill development.
AO3 AO4

Worked example

A log entry that shows thinking

Invented for this guide to show the technique. It is not real student work.

OCR's Summer 2024 moderators' report quotes a weak diary entry, "I read two articles. Success: reading two articles.", and shows how it could be developed. This invented pair applies the same idea to a skills audit.

Weak entry

12 October. Did my skills audit. Referencing 2/5. Presenting 3/5.

Stronger entry

12 October. Did my skills audit. I rated referencing 2/5 because I have never written a reference list, and my last history essay lost marks for missing citations. I will make learning one referencing style an objective, before I start research. Presenting is 3/5: I speak in class but have never presented to people who do not know the subject. Next step: ask my supervisor which referencing style the school uses.

The stronger entry gives a reason for each rating, a decision and a next step. It records thinking, not just activity.

Common mistakes

What OCR's moderators report going wrong at this stage, and what to do instead.

  • Leaving the qualifications part of the PPR empty

    Moderators report this box is often blank. They use it to judge whether your project goes beyond your other courses.

    Instead list every qualification you are taking.

  • Treating the PPR as a form to fill in at the end

    Moderators report incomplete PPRs, and some not submitted at all.

    Instead complete each section at the meeting it belongs to.

  • Writing the log afterwards, or tidying it up

    Diaries "should not be drafted and improved".

    Instead write each entry on the day, as a working document.

  • Entries that only list what you did

    Instead add what went well or badly, what you decided, and your next step.

  • A skills audit that is only ticks

    "Skills audits which do not go beyond ticking boxes are not likely to be effective."

    Instead give a reason for each rating and choose the skills you will work on.

Sources: OCR H857 moderators' report, Summer 2023, OCR H857 moderators' report, Summer 2024

Checklist before you move on