A level Art

[Justmehere5]

Hi does anyone know what the percentage is for the controlled exam in art for A level towards the whole exam mark/grade? Thanks.

AQA – personal investigation is 60% and response to externally set assignment is 40%. Both are NEA so there is no exam as such. But I guess the second one is done in a controlled exam-style environment (15 hours) so if you mean that one then AQA is 40%.

If yours is a different board then the info is easy enough to find.

www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/art-and-design/a-level/art-and-design-7201/specification/specification-at-a-glance

Thank you @clary - I’m trying to get to the nitty gritty of what the actual controlled exam is worth? Within the 40%.

As I understand it (and this is not my area of expertise!) the controlled exam (15 hours long so usually done over 2-3 days IME) is the whole of the externally set assignment that is worth 40%. Not sure what you mean by "within the 40%" tbh.

According to the 2024 grade boundaries document, for AQA the maximum is 480, so for one element and 192 for the other?

DS2 took Art at A level, but in 2021, so things were a bit different then.

This might help?
https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/art-and-design/a-level/art-and-design-7201/specification/scheme-of-assessment

@clary thanks. I mean all of the prep that goes with it and then the exam. We were told by school they dropped the overall marks because of the controlled exam outcome.
We had also been told that the prep in the book leading up to the exam was just as important and that the final isn’t as important as the 3 months of work you do (which is a lot) - hope that makes sense.
So it’s confusing.

@MarchingFrogs thanks for this!
mum trying to find out how much of the marks are for prep and how much is for the actual controlled exam. Which is not easy to find out :)

The prep and the work done in the controlled exam are marked holistically against the four assessment objectives- develop/explore/record/present. The point of the work done under exam conditions is to ensure the students independent capabilities, but the AO's can overlap.

@nfg2000 thanks. Is all the prep relevant and part of the marking? Because my dc did a lot with lots of practice.

Is this relating to A level art sat in 2024? So you are concerned that the mark was not accurate? (just you used the past tense.) Or are they taking the exam in 2025?

The prep is really important as otherwise you would be in the exam cold. But AFAIK it’s not marked separately from the controlled assessment; its impact on the marking as much as anything will be in terms of how it has improved the final piece. As a PP says, the prep work could have had input but the controlled assessment will be their own work.

@clary thank you. Yes past exam. Unfortunately none of this was explained to my dc at school. They did a huge amount of experimentation with different outcomes before the final piece as were told that’s what was expected to get a good grade.

Hi, A level Art teacher here!

It's not easy to find out because it's rather holistic, however straight down the line, the final exam itself (the work produced in exam conditions) I guess would be 10 of the 40% and a quarter of the grade because it's all of AO4 which is one of 4 assessment objectives.

The prep work is 3/4, however, the prep stuff has to relate to the final piece. Lets say your child chose the theme "still life" and prepped and experimented with still life then drew a portrait in the exam...that's gonna tamper with grades for AO1 and 2 in a way that it wouldn't if the final piece didn't exist at all (if that makes sense), because the prep work is now not worth the prep.

AO2 specifically says that the experimentation should lead to the best outcome possible. If it's felt that your child made a dodgy choice on the day of the exam that will also affect the grade.

AO1 is about research so in my still life/portrait example, the research needs to relate to the outcome. No sense researching vanitas if you're making a Lucian Freud style outcome.

Let me know if that helps!!

Also just to add, presumably your child did GCSE art and it is exactly the same in that too so it is incredibly unfortunate that they didn't understand the structure.

That's not a dig or to say that I don't believe it might not have been made explicit enough, but they have been following the same structure for four years. If you can explain what went wrong I might be able to shed some light on how that misunderstanding happened.

Art teacher here too. If talking in the past tense, I'm assuming you know there's nothing that can be done? Any appeal towards the marking process would have needed to be done back in May, when you were given the NEA marks.

It's a tricky one- and I've been doing this 22 years. As a pp said, if your DC did GCSE Art, they should be familiar with the process. But their teachers have to undergo standardisation training each year and I would hope always want the best outcome for their students, so any unfairness should be most unlikely.

But you can't entirely dislocate the final piece (done in the 15 hours) from what has gone before in terms of marks. They're inherently interlinked.

Just adding, if your DC mostly experimented in the prep period, for example, they might have got full marks for AO2 but flunked out in the other AO criteria because their recording (AO3) was weak, or there was no evidence of development (AO1). Or the response was not personal (AO4). Therefore they could only access a quarter of the mark.

@Ensconcedinvelvet this helps massively thank you.
we have had a bit of a difficult time because we were never given the chance to appeal due to malpractice and would have done, because this is what we thought.

We have since been told that marks were low (substantially) as teacher didn’t think the controlled exam piece was refined enough. Dc had done a huge amount of prep including documented research, artist exploration with different mediums and outcomes all relating to the final piece. So we have been wondering how much the very final piece was worth in relation to the whole exam.

We asked 3 months ago why the unexpected marks and only got a reply yesterday which still wasn’t clear.

I appreciate your help thanks.

@nfg2000 thanks. Sadly we were never given the marks and have just been through a process because of malpractice.

@nfg2000 I wish I could say here what I have been told that leads me to believe my dc has been let down. It’s very frustrating.
Weirdly, dc worked doubly hard for A level and followed every single AQA guideline. Their work was shown to the class as inspiration as it was presented so well.
I could go on…
So, I don’t think we will ever get to the bottom of it. It’s happily in the past now.

Oh gosh what an awful situation. It stands to reason that if the teacher was engaged with malpractice that they may not have been the best at marking either. However marks would have been corroborated by both the head of department (also maybe wider team depending on department size) and an exam board external moderator. So without knowing the situation at all and at a best guess it feels like the staff member over-marked the prep work (before it was moderated) and then on final mark submission when the work was marked as a team, the team had to pull the marks down substantially because they just weren't accurate. This will of course have come as a shock to your dc because to be told all year you're going to get a B and then come out with a D would be heartbreaking...but it does occasionally happen.

You do however mention that you have been told now that they were undermarked in no the end? So i can't really comment on how that happened or why the moderator didn't adjust marks.

@Ensconcedinvelvet thank you for being understanding. It has been really hard to be honest.
The problem also is that we were promised updates so that dc could work on any ‘gaps’ but they were not given. Also, reports gradings were behind as books not checked often behind so dc never knew the true grade and it would often go up after we questioned this.

There is more to it regarding the moderation and sample. But it’s just me moaning at this point.
Just very grateful for your explanation.

I'm sorry to hear that you've had such a bad experience. I don't know if any consolation can be had, but if Art college/uni is the goal then I'd like to think portfolio rather than grade is the most important thing.

@nfg2000 you are right. It was and they all loved the portfolio. So not all bad. Thank you :)