EPQ toolkit
The PPR and your activity log
Two separate records, and both are required. The PPR is a form you complete at your meetings. The log is written on the day the work happens.
The Project Progression Record (PPR) is OCR's own four-page form for recording how your Extended Project progressed. You fill it in at your supervisor meetings and submit it for moderation. Your activity log is a separate record, written by you on the days you work.
Students often think the two are the same thing. They are not, and a project missing either one is incomplete.
Two records, not one
| Project Progression Record | Activity log or diary | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | OCR's form, a few pages long | Your own running record |
| Who completes it | You, signed by your supervisor | You |
| When | At your supervisor meetings | Every time you work on the project |
| Format | Fixed, set by OCR | Any format you will keep using |
| Required? | Yes, and submitted for moderation | Yes, and submitted for moderation |
Your centre may use OCR's form or its own version. Ask your supervisor which one you should be using before you start filling anything in.
What the PPR contains
Its sections are completed at different points across the project rather than in one sitting. Each row below gives the phase where that section is filled in.
| Section | When you complete it | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Learner and centre details | Phase 0 | Your name, candidate number and centre |
| Current programme of study | Phase 0 | Every qualification you are taking, with type, level and subject |
| Date started | Phase 0 | The date you began the project |
| Project topic | Phase 1 | Your topic, once you have chosen it |
| Rationale | Phase 1 | Why you chose it, and how it links to your courses, interests or plans |
| Aims and objectives | Phase 1 | Your aim and up to four objectives |
| Initial Planning | Phase 3 | Completed at your initial planning meeting |
| Mid Project Review | Phase 4 | Completed at your mid project review meeting |
| End of Project | Phase 6 | Your review, and an evidence map pointing to where each piece of evidence is |
| Submission date and signatures | Phase 6 | Signed by you and by your supervisor |
The activity log
OCR calls it a log or a diary. There is no required template, so use whatever you will actually keep up: a dated document, a notebook, a spreadsheet or a project app.
Two rules matter more than the format.
- Write it on the day. Diaries "should not be drafted and improved". A log written up at the end reads as invented, because it is.
- Record thinking, not just activity. What you did is the least valuable line in the entry.
Four headings for every entry
- What I did. Short. One or two lines.
- What went well or badly, and why. The "why" is the part that scores.
- Decisions I made and why. Include what you rejected and the reason.
- Next step. One concrete action for next time.
Every supervisor meeting gets an entry too. Your supervisor can only give you verbal feedback, so your log is the only record that the conversation happened and what came out of it.
Worked example
A research week, logged two ways
Invented for this guide to show the technique. It is not real student work.
9 November. Did some research. Found some useful sources about supermarket packaging. Going to read them next week.
9 November. Searched the college database for packaging policy reports, 45 minutes. Three of the five results were trade press summarising the same government release, so I went to the release itself and added it as Source 11.
Went badly: my first search terms were too broad and returned mostly news stories. Changing "plastic packaging" to "packaging waste reporting" fixed it, and I have written the working search terms in my source log.
Decision: dropped Source 3, a blog post, because it gives no source for its figures and the same numbers appear in Source 11 with a method attached.
Next step: read Source 11's method section and check whether its 2024 figure is comparable with the 2022 one I already have.
The stronger entry is about the same hour of work. It shows a search strategy, a rejected source with a reason, and a specific next step, which is evidence for AO2 and AO3 at once.
The five meetings
OCR requires at least five in-person meetings with your supervisor, and the PPR carries three of them.
- Topic proposal.
- Initial planning, recorded in the PPR.
- Mid project review, recorded in the PPR.
- End of project review, recorded in the PPR.
- Your final presentation, to your supervisor and an audience.
Write the dates into your log as soon as you have them, and write up each meeting the same day.
What goes wrong
- The PPR is completed at the end, from memory, rather than at each meeting.
- The qualifications table is left blank.
- The log lists activity with no decisions, like the entry moderators quote: "I read two articles. Success: reading two articles."
- The log is rewritten neatly before submission, which removes the evidence that it was kept in real time.
- Meetings happen but are never written up, so there is no record of what was agreed.
- The PPR is not signed, or not submitted at all.
Next: referencing, or see strong and weak examples of every document in the project.