EPQ toolkit
How the marks work
Sixty marks, four objectives. Most of them are for how you worked, not for what you produced.
The OCR Extended Project Qualification (H857) is marked out of 60 against four assessment objectives: AO1 Manage, AO2 Use resources, AO3 Develop and realise, and AO4 Review. Your centre marks the project, then OCR moderates that marking. Knowing which objective a piece of evidence serves is the fastest way to stop wasting effort.
The four objectives
| AO | What it covers | Marks | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| AO1 Manage | Choosing, designing, planning and carrying out the project | 12 | 20% |
| AO2 Use resources | Researching, selecting, organising and analysing information and sources | 12 | 20% |
| AO3 Develop and realise | Using skills and problem solving to make decisions and achieve what you planned | 24 | 40% |
| AO4 Review | Evaluating the project and your own learning, and presenting it | 12 | 20% |
Three of the four objectives are about process, not product.
Only AO3 is partly about the thing you produce, and even there the marks follow the decisions you made while producing it.
AO3 is worth twice as much as the others
AO3 carries 24 marks, as much as AO1 and AO2 together. It covers using your skills and solving problems to make decisions and achieve what you planned.
That has one practical consequence. A finished outcome with no record of the decisions behind it cannot reach the higher bands, however good the outcome looks. The evidence for AO3 is built in Phase 4, in your decision log, your drafts or prototypes, and your record of what went wrong and what you did about it.
How the bands work
Each objective is split into four bands, and your centre picks the band your work fits best overall. This is called best fit: you do not have to meet every part of a band to be placed in it, and one strong feature does not lift you into a band your work as a whole does not reach.
| Band | AO1, AO2 and AO4 | AO3 |
|---|---|---|
| Band 4, the highest | 10 to 12 marks | 19 to 24 marks |
| Band 3 | 7 to 9 marks | 13 to 18 marks |
| Band 2 | 4 to 6 marks | 7 to 12 marks |
| Band 1 | 1 to 3 marks | 1 to 6 marks |
The wording of each band is in OCR's specification, in the marking criteria. Read the band above the one you think you are in, and ask what evidence is missing.
Where each objective is earned
| Objective | Mostly earned in | The evidence |
|---|---|---|
| AO1 Manage | Phase 0, Phase 1 and Phase 3 | PPR, time plans and their revisions, the resources list, meeting records |
| AO2 Use resources | Phase 2 | Source log, source evaluations, reference list, research notes |
| AO3 Develop and realise | Phase 4 | Decision log, drafts or making evidence, problems and how you solved them, the outcome |
| AO4 Review | Phase 5 and Phase 6 | Final evaluation, repeated skills audit, presentation and audience feedback |
Most pieces of evidence serve more than one objective. A log entry explaining why you changed your plan is AO1 and AO3 at once.
What moves work into a higher band
OCR's moderators report the same differences between stronger and weaker projects every year.
- Choice of topic. The top band for the first strand of AO1 needs a topic that is "targeted and focused and provides extensive scope for project development". A broad or descriptive title limits every objective after it.
- Evidence written at the time. Records made as the work happened read differently from records assembled at the end, and moderators say so.
- Decisions with reasons. Not what you did, but what you chose, what you rejected, and why.
- Judgement of sources, not lists of them. Usefulness and reliability, in your own words.
- Honest evaluation. Naming a limitation and explaining its effect scores better than claiming everything worked.
Next: the PPR and your activity log, where most of this evidence actually lives.