Course Content for GCSE Single Award Science

Assessment:
Candidates for Single Award may be entered for either Foundation or Higher Tier. They will take one 90 minute paper which also serves as the first day paper for Double Award. They also take a 45 minute paper which is a sub-set of the Double Award second day paper.

Content coverage:
The Salters GCSE Science course was designed to provide a coherent scheme of work for Double Award Science. The structure of the National Curriculum Programme of Study for Single Award Science does not map simply onto the Salters topics.

The first stage in constructing a scheme of work for single award is to identify which sections of course units deal with content which is within the single award specification (and hence, using the scheme of work tables in the Teacher Pack, identify which pages or spreads in the Student Books are relevant for single award).

An analysis of the course for single award is summarised below. Each course unit is based on an everyday context. As a result, particular areas of science theory may occur in different contexts in several units. Thus, there may be several opportunities to cover any particular piece of theory. If all of these are counted, it appears that the single award course would be prohibitively long. All of the course units except Restless Earth include some activities which relate to single award content. However, this is often only a very small part of the unit and can be covered by some other activity elsewhere in the course. The OCR specification gives unit references by each content statement. This makes it possible to check where else a topic may be covered, so that decisions can be made about which activity to keep and which to omit.

Using only a sub-set of activities can weaken continuity and development in a unit. Many schools restructure the content (for example, combining parts of one unit within another). We know that different schools have found different ways of doing this. If you teach the single award course, we should be very grateful if you can share your working arrangements, either by contributing to the user forum, or by emailing your outline scheme of work to Peter Nicolson, so that we can circulate a newsletter with models for other schools to build on.

Content required for year 10 units:

Energy Matters: The whole unit is required. It would be possible to merge this unit with Electricity in the Home.

Keeping Healthy: The first three sections of this unit are required. The work on enzymes in section 4 could be combined with Section 4 of Food for Thought.

Transporting Chemicals: Section 1 is only required for context. Work on the Hazchem code could be omitted. Section 2 is not needed.

Construction Materials: Most of the activities in this unit are needed.

Moving On: This unit is NOT required for single award. N.B. Note this is a correction of the statement shown here earlier.

Food for Thought: The first three sections could be omitted. Section 4 could be combined with Section 4 of Keeping Healthy.

Restless Earth: None of this unit is required for single award.

Electricity in the Home: Section 1 on static electricity is not required. The remainder of the unit could be combined with Energy Matters.

Mining and Minerals: Sections 1, 3 and 4 are not needed. Section 2 could be incorporated into Section 4 of Construction Materials.

Balancing Acts: Sections 2, and 4 are not needed. Work on human influences on the environment from Section 1 could be put into Waste Not, Want Not. Work on population growth from Section 3 could go into Section 1 of Evolution.

Communicating Information: Section 2, and parts of Sections 3 and 4 may be omitted.

Content Required for year 11 units:

Seeing Inside the Body: Parts of Section 4 may be omitted.

Controlling Change: Only the first three sections are needed.

Making Use of Oil: Most of the work on alkenes in Section 3 can be omitted.

Staying Alive: Only the work in Section 3 (digestion) is needed. This might be done as part of Controlling Change.

Waste Not, Want Not: Only Sections 2 and 4 are needed.

Earth in Space: Most of this unit is required.

Evolution: Almost all of this unit is required.

Sports Science: This unit is NOT required for single award. N.B. Note this is a correction of the statement shown here earlier.

Burning and Bonding: Part of Section 1 and all of Section 3 are needed.

Energy Today and Tomorrow: Section 3 and parts of Section 2 are needed. It would be possible to combine these with Communicating Information.

If the course is reduced in this way, there will now be no coverage of the Haber and Contact processes. These might best be incorporated into Transporting Chemicals. There will also be greatly reduced opportunities to revise and extend ideas about chemical formulas and equations.

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