"And now you may begin" – the story of an exam paper

Did you know that an exam paper starts life about a year before your exam?

With millions of GCSE and A Level students now taking exams, we've outlined the key steps in creating an exam paper in a new video for students. This is part of OCR’s 'Explaining examining' project to provide information on the basic processes of examining.

Every exam paper starts life with the writing of individual questions but what makes a good question? As the new 'Creating an exam paper' video explains, questions must be set at the right level, cover topics relevant to the course and be clear. Exam questions are designed so all students can demonstrate their knowledge, skills and understanding. Not every topic on a GCSE or A Level course will be examined every year however and a good exam paper is designed to have a variety of questions on it, from straightforward ones to more demanding ones, so students of all abilities are tested. This new video complements a video explaining how we mark and grade exams.

As soon as an exam is taken, thousands of OCR examiners prepare to mark papers 'online'. Ensuring marking is consistent and accurate is a key concern for OCR. As part of 'Explaining examining', we provide more information on online marking, and how OCR runs six distinctive checks to help ensure all examiners are marking to the same standard, and students’ performance in exams is properly recognised and rewarded.

To see our new videos and factsheets, take a look at our explaining examining pages.