Learn from others: Browse anonymised top 3 and middle 3 mock exam results. No candidate numbers shown.
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| Question | Topic / Title | Max Marks | Class Avg | Performance % | RAG Rating |
|---|
Click on column headers to sort the table.
| Question | Topic / Title | Max Marks | Class Avg | Performance % | RAG Rating |
|---|
Overall: The cohort of 27 students achieved a class average of 40.8/80 (51%) with a pass rate (Grade 4+) of 67% (18 of 27 students). The strongest performance was in the multiple choice and short-answer sections, with Q7b (Institute for Government view, 89%), Q7a (Blair view, 93%) and Q1b (discrimination, 100%) all scoring very well. The weakest area by far was Q7c (Source Agreement, 13%), suggesting students struggled to identify points of agreement between the two sources. The higher-tariff extended writing questions (Q7d and Q8) also showed significant room for improvement.
"Which view do you agree with more?" (12 Marks)
Hover over the highlighted text to see the examiner's commentary.
"The ages of responsibility should be increased." (15 Marks)
People have been moving to Britain for thousands of years. The Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans all arrived, partly as invaders, and each brought new languages, ideas and customs that still shape British culture today. Not all migration came through invasion, however. In the 1840s, many Irish people came to Britain to escape the potato famine, which left millions facing hunger and starvation. In the 1930s and 1940s, Jewish people fled persecution in Europe and Russia and found safety here, and after the Second World War many Polish people settled in Britain after their country had been occupied first by the Nazis and then by the Soviet army.
From the 1950s onwards, people arrived from former British colonies in the Caribbean and South Asia, often to fill shortages of workers in industry and public services. More recently, membership of the European Union allowed people from other EU countries to live and work in the UK, usually looking for work and better opportunities for their families.
The census – an official count of the whole population taken every ten years – shows how these movements have changed the country. In England and Wales, about 91% of people identified as White in 2001, falling to about 86% in 2011. Over the same period, the numbers of people identifying as Indian, Pakistani and African all increased.
Blue: points quoted from the source. Green: own knowledge that is not in the source. A full-mark answer has three of each.
The source shows that migration to Britain has a long history. Early arrivals such as the Vikings and Normans “brought new languages, ideas and customs”EXAMINER: Source point 1: quoted in inverted commas and used to answer the question., and in the 1840s Irish people came “to escape the potato famine”EXAMINER: Source point 2: quoted in inverted commas and used to answer the question.. After the war, people from the Caribbean and South Asia came “often to fill shortages of workers in industry and public services”EXAMINER: Source point 3: quoted in inverted commas and used to answer the question.. Using my own knowledge, in 1948 the ship Empire Windrush brought people from the Caribbean, after the British Nationality Act 1948 gave people from the colonies the right to live in the UKEXAMINER: Own knowledge 1: accurate, relevant, not in the source, and linked back to the question.. Later, when countries such as Poland joined the EU in 2004, many Polish people came to work in the UK, and Polish is now one of the most widely spoken languages here after EnglishEXAMINER: Own knowledge 2: accurate, relevant, not in the source, and linked back to the question..
The census shows the result: “about 91% of people identified as White in 2001, falling to about 86% in 2011”EXAMINER: Source point 4: quoted in inverted commas and used to answer the question.. The 2021 census found that this had fallen again, to about 82% in England and Wales, so the trend has continuedEXAMINER: Own knowledge 3: accurate, relevant, not in the source, and linked back to the question.. This shows migration has steadily made the UK more diverse.
Instead of writing: Lots of people came to Britain from different places.EXAMINER: Too vague: no period, group or fact is named, so it shows no knowledge and no change over time.
| Level | Marks | Descriptor |
|---|---|---|
| Level 3 | 5–6 | Uses the source well to show how waves of migration (invasion, famine, persecution, post-war labour shortages, EU membership) changed the population, and uses the census data. Applies at least two well-developed pieces of own knowledge, e.g. Empire Windrush (1948) and the British Nationality Act 1948; EU enlargement in 2004 and the growth of the Polish community; the 2021 census (about 82% White in England and Wales); the end of free movement after Brexit (31 December 2020); Ugandan Asians (1972). |
| Level 2 | 3–4 | Clear answer describing several migration waves from the source and linking them to the changing ethnic make-up. Applies at least one piece of own knowledge, such as naming Windrush. |
| Level 1 | 1–2 | Simple answer that lists one or two groups from the source (e.g. ‘Irish people came because of the famine’). Relies almost entirely on the source. |
| Level 0 | 0 | No rewardable material. |
Features of a good answer:
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