End - of - Unit Tests for Salters GCSE Science

The examining board, OCR, publish a series of 21 tests to be used with the course. If your scheme of work is organised into units as in the published Teacher Packs and Student Books, the tests may be used at the end of each unit to check on the progress of individual pupils. Even where teaching is differently structured, the tests provide a rich supply of questions related to the course which illustrate the question styles used in terminal examinations.

What is in each test?

Each test is designed to cover the content taught in one course unit. Thus, there is a test for each chapter in the student books.

Questions in each test lead to a total of 48 marks, covering the full ability range. Most of the questions are taken or adapted from past Salters GCSE examination papers, and so illustrate the style which students will encounter in their terminal examinations. Mark-schemes for each test are also provided.

The tests can (just!) be completed in a 40 minute lesson.

Experience in trials suggests that for more able classes, teachers prefer to use the full test in order to give the most comprehensive cover of the unit content. However, for lower ability groups, the tests are arranged so that just the first 30 marks can be printed, to provide a 'foundation tier' test targetted at grades G - C. This avoids the situation of students becoming discouraged by too much work which they cannot cope with.

How are the tests laid out?

Tests are provided as printed copy, single-sided on A4 paper. A large font is used, so that they can easily be reduced to an A5 page format. If copied double-sided, this leads to a 12-page booklet for the full range test (3 sheets of A4 folded and stapled) or an 8-page (2 sheets of A4) foundation test. Some schools in trials made the booklets re-useable and asked students to write on file paper. However, the results can be very difficult to mark, and save little compared to students writing answers into the test booklets.

Mark-schemes provide answers to each part question. For each test, a grid is provided for analysis of the responses. This may be used to record marks for each part question for each student. For the benefit of individual pupils, this can indicate areas of the unit where they need to concentrate revision. For the benefit of staff, it can also indicate areas where a class as a whole have not grasped the work well. It is then sometimes possible to incorporate some revision or remedial work into later course units.

How were the tests developed?

The original tests were developed several years ago. The current set have been adapted to match the specification for 2003 and subsequent years, with several new questions introduced. They have been tested in trials in 20 schools. Note that they do not include credit for quality of written communication (weighting 4% in the final examinations), and only include a very few references to "Ideas and Evidence" (Sc1.1).

Can the tests be used to predict GCSE grades?

Trials of the tests were carried out over a 2 year period. 20 schools were involved in the trials, and seven of these sent back completed mark grids for more than half of the tests. The analysis of the results is based on 1975 test results from 163 students.

In general, trial schools used tests fairly regularly in year 10, but less often in year 11, perhaps because of pressures of time. Because some students are 'late developers' (and others lose motivation as the course proceeds!) the predictive value of the tests is rather less in the early stages of the course.

Individual scores in single tests showed almost no correlation with eventual GCSE grades (The Pearson product-moment correlation was +0.12). Most students have some topics where they are particularly strong, and others where they are weak. However, performance over an extended series of tests is more reliable. For students in the schools which completed and reported more than half the tests, the correlation between average test score and final grade rose to +0.85.

Based on the final GCSE grades achieved by these 163 students, the following broad guidance can be offered:

Keeping up these averages suggests that students are on course for grades C or A. However, note that one student with an average of 32.5 finally achieved only grade C, whilst another with an average of only 17.5 (over 17 of the 21 tests!) also achieved grade C

Most of the lower achieving students in the trial schools took only the shorter, foundation, version of the tests, so figures for lower grade thresholds are not reliable.

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