Introduction

OCR's A Level ICT team have ignored teachers for many years and their exams and coursework are poorly constructed with many errors.  Until there is a change of personnel in the examining team, these mistakes will continue.

With cuts in public funding, OfQUAL are too busy to investigate these errors.  OCR will not admit to these errors.  OCR will no longer answer any questions regarding this qualification.

These blogs are designed to help students understand coursework questions which have been poorly constructed and also to expose the errors and issues with OCR's A Level ICT.

Problems with G062 AS ICT Coursework 2015-16 Task 1

I've discovered a number of issues with this task so far.  As OCR are unwilling to answer them, I've listed them below:

1ai – this is a typing task – data should have been given in a data file

1aii – which are the variables?  Are Low, Mid, High variable, especially as in (e) Guy decides to change the season?

1aiii – what is the purpose of the named range – need to know in order to implement the named range and know whether or not to include titles in the range

1bi – should the total days hired be inclusive of both start and return date?  Example suggests it should be but this is not clear to students

1bi – if students use data validation for Type of Van as their drop down list, then this will NOT show when printing.  The question clearly asks for a PRINT on a single side of A4.  Do students need to show a screenshot too so that the drop down box shows?  I would advise using a form control though as this helps later in the question.

1bii – as students may have used a validation rule for Type of Van, this question could lead to evidence being missed out because it just asks for evidence of validation and doesn't specify which validation.

1biv – the day of the week can be displayed by changing the display format instead of using a calculation by using a custom format of “dddd”.  Is this acceptable?  If a calculation is required, then students could realistically just use a formula that says =CollectionDate and then change the format to show “dddd”. 

1di – there is far too much repetition with the IF function to display blank values which could make easier parts of this task inaccessible to some students.

1di – “Additional driver costs should not be included in the breakdown of the van Cost per day.” – does this mean they should not be included in the cumulative cost either and just added to the  Quotation total on the Quotation worksheet, or should the additional driver costs be included in the cumulative total?

1dv – this is an exam question and unnecessary on coursework.  What if students don’t have a formula with both absolute and relative cell references but they do have a function with both?  Will the function be acceptable?

1d – if students have used conditional formatting to display blank values for 1d then where are they asked for evidence of this?