A Level Law – preparing for mock exams

As the mock examination series approaches for some schools, I’ve written my post with the aim of helping you in your preparations. I've included some advice and tips on how to use our resources to best support your students and pulled together answers to some of the most frequently asked questions I’ve been receiving.

Creating mock exam papers

The June 2019 papers are available on Interchange, alongside the mark schemes and Examiners’ Reports – access them via resources and materials - past papers and mark schemes.

The Examiners’ Reports help to explain how each question was marked, what students did well and where some students could improve. They include some short extracts from candidate scripts and highlight misconceptions.

More advice about using Examiners’ Reports can be found in our recent blog post ‘how you can make the Examiners' Reports work for you’.

The candidate exemplars and examiner commentaries based on the June 2019 series will shortly be released – some highlight wonderful answers, some focus on how answers could be improved, and others focus on particular things a student did well and techniques to emulate.

Using the AS past exam papers as a resource

If you’re putting together your own mini mock, then don’t forget to look at the AS Level papers too – some topics which have not yet been included in the A Level papers have been covered in the AS Level ones.

Although the questions in the AS Level papers are worth fewer marks, they still give students an idea about the types of questions that might be asked and are a useful resource.

Where and when can I access past papers from?

If you’re a school that holds its mock exams later on in the year, please be aware that the June 2019 A Level papers will be added to our public website in May 2020.

AS Level papers will be added in July 2020. Students will be able to access the papers themselves from that date, via the qualification page.

If you’re planning to hold mocks after May 2020, then the June 2020 papers will be added to Interchange within two to ten days of the exam being sat, with mark schemes following on results day.

Alternatively, the practice papers released during Christmas 2018 will remain on Interchange indefinitely and will never be made available to the public on the OCR website.

Once your mock exams have taken place, please feel free to share the Examiners’ Reports and exemplars with your students. We hope you find them to be a useful teaching and learning resource, and revision tool as well when next year’s exams approach.

Answers to some of your frequently asked questions

I’ve provided you with some answers to frequently asked questions which may be helpful in the run up to mock exams season and the June 2020 exams series:

Q1. Could students be set a question on EU law?

A. With regards to EU law, this remains on the specification so it is a potential topic for the question papers. Students are encouraged to be aware of the changing nature of law, EU Law included, but we will continue to monitor the EU negotiations and will consider any appropriate actions.

Q2. For contract law, do students need to be aware of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 and the Sale of Goods and Services Act 1982?

A. Only the new Consumer Rights Act 2015 is named in the specification, but as terms are part of the evaluation content, it would be useful for students to be aware that business to business is still governed by the Sale of Goods Act/Sales of Goods and Services Act and why, for consumers, these were replaced.

Q3. How many points does a student have to make for a Level 4 response?

A. There isn’t a set number of points that students need to include for a Level 4 argument, it depends on the individual student and on the question itself. If the key points have all been fully discussed and developed, and there is an excellent analysis and evaluation then it would meet Level 4. If you feel like it’s possibly more borderline between Level 3 and 4 then our advice would be to award marks at the bottom of Level 4.

More advice about where to place students is in our mark schemes:

Q4. When students are referring to civil cases in the exam, what should they do if they forget the case name?

A. Our advice would be to always give the full name of a case. However, if a student forgets the case name but remembers some facts, we’d suggest they write something along the lines of “in a stated case involving x, y & z”. If what they’re writing is relevant and correct, then we will give marks wherever we can.

Q5. Will Section A. questions always be matching pairs – e.g. 1&3 and 2&4

A. For the H415/01 and 02 papers, yes – this is how they will be organised. Students don’t have to answer the questions in their matching pairs, they just have to do one describe question and one discuss question.

You’ll find a range of assessment materials and candidate exemplars on our qualification page.

Stay connected

If you have any questions please submit your comments below or email me at law@ocr.org.uk. You can also sign up to receive email updates.

About the author

Phoebe Davis - Subject Support Co-ordinator

Phoebe is a Subject Support Co-ordinator and has worked for Cambridge Assessment in various roles since 2015. Since joining the Subject Team in 2018, Phoebe has been responsible for a range of subjects including Law, Citizenship and The Extended Project Qualification.