GCSE Citizenship Studies Exemplar Skills Profile and Commentary Unit 2 Controlled Assessment: Advocacy and Representation
GCSE Citizenship Studies Skills Profile 2009 Unit 2 Controlled Assessment: Advocacy and Representation abc GCSE Citizenship Studies (Short Course/First Half of Full Course) Centre name: Centre no: Candidate name: Candidate no: Title of Unit 2 Controlled Assessment:...... Marks Awarded for Unit 2: Advocacy and Representation Max. Marks Stage 1 Inform Yourself 10 Marks Awarded Teacher s Supporting Statements Stage 2 Justify Choices/Prepare Case 10 Stage 3 Advocacy and Taking Action 20 Stage 4 Assess the Impact 10 Stage 5 Reflect and Evaluate 10 Total 60 Note for centres: Citizenship Skills Profiles and portfolios of evidence should be sent to the AQA Moderator by 05 May 2009. Details of any additional assistance given: Teacher s Declaration I confirm that the candidate participated in the controlled assessment activity recorded in this profile and that it represents a fair record of the activity and contributions of the candidate. The profile is the sole work of the candidate, apart from any details given above, and the final marks reflect that. Teacher s signature. Date Candidate s Declaration I confirm that I participated in the controlled assessment activity recorded in this profile and that it represents a true record of the activity and my contributions. Candidate s signature. Date The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales 3644723 and a registered charity number 1073334. Registered address AQA, Devas Street, Manchester M15 6EX. Dr Michael Cresswell Director General
Stage 1 Inform Yourself In this section you have to work with others to select a citizenship issue, identify roles and agree responsibilities within your group. You should collect information from a variety of sources: eg from people in school, in the community, in authority, from organisations. You may write letters, make phone calls, use the internet, books, newspapers, leaflets, etc. What is the citizenship issue you have chosen? Why have you chosen it? We have chosen the issue of democracy in schools. Our school is not very democratic at all and we do not feel that our concerns are taken seriously. We decided to try to set up a School Council, so that each year group would have representatives and have a means of getting their voice heard, at least by other students, and hopefully by our teachers and the Head. We think that taking part in a democratic process of elections and meetings would be a valuable experience for everyone. We will all learn more about being active citizens by taking part and trying to bring about changes that are important to us during our education. The citizenship issues and concepts that are relevant to this are democracy, rights and responsibilities, change, fairness, equal opportunity, making a difference, advocacy. The citizenship skills we will use are making judgements / decisions, active participation, representation, informing opinions, collaborative working, negotiation and tolerance. What are your aims? Our aims are to :- a) find out if many students and teachers agree with us b) look at what happens in other schools c) find out information from website to help us d) prepare our case e) arrange a meeting with Mr. Smith (Head Teacher) to ask permission to establish a School Council present our case Identify the research you need to do (what you need to find out). We need to :- - make sure that most people would want a school council. To do this each member of the group could go round a different year group and just ask for a show of hands during morning registration. - decide how best to approach Mr. Smith, maybe talk to Heads of Year first to get their views. - find out what happens in other schools and what those students think about their School Council, so that we know what works well in other schools and try to avoid things that don t work. - research school councils from the internet to discover more information about setting one up and the best ways to run the first meeting. - organise assemblies for each year group who will do what etc. - decide on how to run the elections when where who could help teachers will need to supervise and make sure everything is fair. - what voting system to use look at our class work notes and discuss. - find out and negotiate suitable dates and times with Heads of Year so that there is nothing to clash with our plans. All this should give us the information we need before we meet Mr. Smith, so that our plans are clear and we can show him our research.
Identify how you will explore a range of views within your group and the opinions of others. Explain some different opinions about your issue (eg what others think about it historical views and views of today). We will talk to people in all year groups to make sure we have support from the whole school. We will ask Heads of Year their views on our idea and arrange dates and times if we have permission to do this. We will talk to our friends from other schools to gather their views on their school council and how elections are held and how they know what s going on in the council. We will use various websites to gain more information. Look in text books about the types of voting systems then decide which one to use. Different opinions about school councils are Positive help students to learn about democracy; how to take part in voting; learn about different voting systems; learn how meetings are run; members of the council put forward views from others and have to inform their year group about what decisions are taken Negative a waste of time; only a few people take part; they don t represent everyone; nothing ever changes so what s the point; we never find out what goes on. Who else is in your group? How did you decide who to work with? We were given a free choice of who we wanted to work with. I decided to work with people in my class group because it would make it much easier to talk about things when we wanted to, as we see each other every day during registration. I knew the others were interested in this as it was something we had talked about when we learned about local councils and how they were elected in our lessons. I also know that everyone in the group will work hard and do their part and keep to the deadlines. The members of this group are Ed, Sam, Anna, Kate and me. We all feel strongly that we should be able to make our voice heard about things that go on in school that affect us, this does not happen at the moment and we think that the people who make the rules do not realise the effects they have. We want to put that right, have our say, and make a difference for everyone. Describe the roles and responsibilities you each have and how you made these decisions: (i) my roles and responsibilities; (ii) roles and responsibilities of others in my group. We all have the responsibility to carry out our roles and not to let the others down, to do what we agree to do as our own work, on time, and to do our best. We will be tolerant and respect each others opinions and listen to each other and try not to interrupt, so we will all have our views heard. We have agreed that we will accept group decisions and get on with the task even if individually we may have preferred a different course of action this is accepting the wishes of the majority being democratic. As a group we have decided that we will all go to see Mr. Smith and each of us will put forward a different point. We will need at least two weeks to do this. When we have carried out the tasks below we will prepare our meeting with Mr. Smith. If he gives us have permission to go ahead we will then need to do more planning. Name Ed Sam Roles and responsibilities Research info from the internet www.schoolcouncils.org Visit all year 7 forms and talk to Head Y7 Talk to friends from other schools Research info from the internet www.citizen.org.uk Visit all year 8 forms and talk to Head Y8
Talk to friends from other schools Anna Kate Me Research info from the internet www.innovation-unit.co.uk Visit all year 9 forms and talk to Head Y9 Talk to friends from other schools Research info from the internet www.nfer.ac.uk Visit all year 10 forms and talk to Head Y710 Talk to friends from other schools. Research info from the internet www.citizenship-pieces.org.uk and www.dcsf.gov.uk Visit all year 11 forms and talk to Head Y11 Talk to friends from other schools. Stage 1 Inform Yourself. Teacher s Comments. Sarah has taken an active part in this so far. She is enthusiastic and really wants to develop a school council, she is well motivated, and has responded well to this section. Clear aims were set within a timescale and there is a clear identification and some understanding shown of citizenship concepts and skills. Clear strategies are given and there is an awareness of the issues involved, some divergent opinions stated, roles and responsibilities are defined. Teacher s Signature:... Date:... Level 0 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 No work worthy of a mark. Presentation, spelling, punctuation and grammar seriously obstruct understanding. The aim is briefly stated or is implicit. Limited attempt to gather information/data. Limited identification of roles and responsibilities of self and/or others. Identifies a different view with support. The text is usually legible. Some relevant information is presented in a simple form. Spelling, punctuation and grammar allow meaning to be derived, although errors are sometimes obstructive. The aim and citizenship concept are stated. Identifies some strategies and gathers information/data from different sources. Partially identifies roles and responsibilities of self and others. Explores some alternative views. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented in a way which assists with the communication of meaning. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate not to obscure the meaning. Clear aims set and citizenship concepts explained. Identifies and carries out clear strategies for gathering information/data from different sources. Fully identifies the roles and responsibilities of self and others. Explores a wide range of views and opinions regarding the issue. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented coherently, employing structure and style. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate to render the meaning clear. Marks 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Stage 2 Justify Choices/Prepare the Case In this section you need to give reasons for choosing your issue and describe how you intend to prepare your case. Why is the issue you have chosen important? Give as many reasons as you can. Our school is not very democratic at all and we do not feel that our concerns are taken seriously. We want to set up a school council so that each year group would have representatives (advocates) and have a means of getting their voice heard, by other students, by our teachers and the Head. We want to have our say in what goes on and participate in decision making when the consequences of the decisions directly affect us. It would help to improve the school for everyone. There are a number of changes that would really benefit students, they could be easily done, if only we could make people listen. We will all learn more about being active citizens by taking part and trying to bring about changes that are important to us during our education. It would help us all to understand what the democratic process is all about and experience an election. Who will be in the audience? Are there any important people/decision-makers? First we will get the views from all the different year groups and the Heads of Year, then we will plan our meeting with Mr. Smith. He is important and we have to convince him that it is a serious request and that it will benefit the school. Mr. Smith and the governors of the school make the decisions. Our audience in this respect is the whole school and especially the decision makers. What is my message? What change do you want to achieve (eg awareness, attitudes, policy, behaviour)? The message we are advocating is that the students want to set up a school council and make the school more democratic. We want to be able to make our voice heard and participate in making decisions that directly affect us. We want to bring about changes that will benefit everyone. This is our message to those who can allow this to happen please listen to our views in a school council. What are the key points to put across? We want to set up a school council to enable students to have a voice in making some decisions experience democracy within the school understand more about the electoral process raise ideas and suggestions for improvements with members of the council. We will put together all of the information from our research and present it to Mr. Smith. We hope we will have considered many different views and be able to explain our case from the knowledge we will have. We hope to gather as much support for our case as possible so that it can be seen that it is not just a group of five students that are making this request, but, that the majority of students really do want to make their voice heard through a school council. We will be able to show the results of our research to support our statements. The information from the websites should be powerful arguments in support of our case, especially from the NFER and the government site.
What type(s) of presentation or media will I use to get the message across? All members of the group will help to put together our presentation. We will talk to Mr. Smith and have some of our research findings to show him graphs of opinions we have from the year groups, Heads of Year and teachers. We plan to leave him with a written request to be allowed to set up a school council as well as the graphs / charts. Why have you chosen this/these type(s) of presentation/media? As a group we thought that this would be the most suitable and hopefully the most persuasive. We thought using graphs / charts would make a good visual impact and would add to our case, demonstrating that so many other students would like the same thing. This will also show that we are sensible and responsible and that the school council would be run properly, to deal with real issues raised by students, not just trivial moans. We will each have a point to pursue in the meeting and be able to present our case well. We thought that if we also presented a written request that we might receive a written reply. How long is this going to take? We have said that the initial research set out in Stage 1 would be done in two weeks. Next we have to meet and put all the information together - compile the charts to show him views from this school what we have found out from other schools and the websites, this will take us another week. Then we need to have discussions about who does what and each write up our own parts. Then we will write our letter, which will take at least another two weeks. Then finally ask Mr. Smith s secretary for an appointment to meet him. Stage 2 Justify Choices/Prepare the Case. Teacher s Comments Sarah has worked with real enthusiasm. The rest of the group are very keen too and they had frequent discussions during morning registration about what they had found out. Choices have been made in consultation with each other and there is a clear understanding and justification for their chosen methods of presentation. The key points are summarised in this text, many others came out through their discussions. They are well prepared for the meeting with the Head. Teacher s Signature:... Date:... Marks Level 0 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 No work worthy of a mark. Presentation, spelling, punctuation and grammar seriously obstruct understanding. With support some choices made with little or no justification. Relevant media chosen and limited points identified. The text is usually legible. Some relevant information is presented in a simple form. Spelling, punctuation and grammar allow meaning to be derived, although errors are sometimes obstructive. Partially justified, relevant choices stated. Appropriate media chosen to present the case in relation to size and type of audience. Demonstrates some recognition of the key points and views to be included; some choices are justified. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented in a way which assists with the communication of meaning. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate not to obscure the meaning. Appropriate, relevant choices made with good justification. Appropriate forms of media chosen to present the case in relation to the size and type of audience. Demonstrates clear recognition of the key points and views to be put forward; choices are 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
thoroughly justified. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented coherently, employing structure and style. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate to render the meaning clear. Stage 3 Advocacy and Taking Action In this section you must carry out your plans and present a well argued case, to try to raise awareness of you issue, to change attitudes or opinions, and/or to gain support for your cause. Provide different pieces of evidence that you used to promote you issue/cause. Evidence could include charts, photographs, notes for a speech, letters, copies of e-mails, witness statements (eg provided by your teacher), newspaper cuttings, transcript of important phone calls, etc. How did you carry out your advocacy/action? We carried out our plans as described in Stages 1 and 2. It was enjoyable and we were surprised at the huge majority of students that supported us and really wanted to see a school council set up. The Heads of Year were mostly in favour, but were concerned that a council could be used to raise individual moans rather than specific issues that concerned the majority. They agreed that any changes would have to benefit everyone. Generally teachers were in favour and some volunteered to help and attend council meetings, perhaps they want to have their say too. The websites were helpful and we gained many positive points from our research that we had not thought of, so it was well worth doing it because it supported our case by evidence from influential organizations and people eg Prof. Crick We spent some time discussing how we should present our case to Mr. Smith and even longer on our individual write ups - considering the points for and against so we knew it thoroughly. The letter requesting permission was hard, but we got there in the end. The actual meeting was surprising. We were all quite nervous even though we felt well prepared. Mr. Smith was really interested and listened to what we had to say. He seemed impressed with what we had found out especially the numbers who said they supported our cause and the facts we presented from the organizations we researched. He asked many questions and found out that we were quite well informed and could argue our case having considered points for and against a school council. (See Stage 1). We were able to discuss how we would run elections and the council meetings with the help and support of the teachers who had offered help. It was very difficult to judge if he would give permission or not, he said that he would have to discuss it with the Senior Teachers and the Governors, but he would reply by the end of term. What evidence did you gather and how? Views from Years 7,8,9,10,11. Heads of Year Teachers. Information from a variety if websites printouts that we used to support our cause. Opinions from friends in other schools where a school council existed. Graphs / charts of results. Individual written points to present. Letter of request.
Stage 3 Advocacy and Taking Action. Teacher s Comments The group was very apprehensive about their meeting with the Head. They asked if they could do a practice run. They had quite a range of different charts and graphs to show support from each year group and members of staff. The research from the websites was impressive and did support their argument. The letter they prepared was concise well structured and demonstrated wide support from within school and from outside organisations. Sarah was able to defend her case well, she was very well informed and understood the opposing points which she could counteract. Sarah was very well organised throughout and was extremely persuasive in her arguments. She worked well in the group situation and carried out her own work thoroughly and efficiently, meeting all the deadlines. They did not have any problems with what they had planned to do so no changes were necessary. Teacher s Signature:... Date:... Level 0 No work worthy of a mark. Presentation, spelling, punctuation and grammar seriously obstruct understanding. Marks 0 Level 1 Some irrelevant evidence produced. The candidate: was disorganised and participated in a limited way; was involved in some of the actions taken; carried out some of their own roles and responsibilities in a very limited way. The text is usually legible. Some relevant information is presented in a simple form. Spelling, punctuation and grammar allow meaning to be derived, although errors are sometimes obstructive. Level 2 Little relevant evidence produced and used. The action taken was partially informed about the issue. The candidate: became disorganised at times but participated in some of the activity; at times worked within the group, and carried out some of own roles and responsibilities; carried out changes to plans made by others. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented in a way which assists with the communication of meaning. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate not to obscure the meaning. Level 3 Some relevant evidence produced and used well. The action taken was reasonably informed and relevant to the issue. The candidate: was organised and participated in most of the activity; generally worked within the group and carried out own roles and responsibilities reasonably well; was able to identify and effect some changes to the plans. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented coherently, employing structure and style. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate to render the meaning clear. Level 4 A range of relevant evidence was produced and used convincingly. The action taken was well informed, appropriate and generally focused on the issue. The candidate: was well organised (most of the time) and participated in most of the activity; generally worked collaboratively and carried out own roles and responsibilities well; was able to identify and effect necessary changes to the plans. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented coherently, employing a clear structure and style. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are accurate and the meaning is clear. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Level 5 A wide range of relevant evidence was produced and used persuasively. The action taken was extremely well informed, appropriate and clearly focused on the issue. The candidate: was well organised throughout and participated fully; worked collaboratively, carrying out own roles and responsibilities with enthusiasm; was able to identify problems and put into effect necessary changes to the plans. The text is legible and well presented. Relevant information is presented coherently, employing a clear structure, conclusion and style. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are very accurate and the meaning is clear. 17 18 19 20
Stage 4 Assess the Impact In this section you are asked to assess the impact your advocacy and action has had. This could be done by asking your audience for their opinions in the form of a questionnaire, for instance. You then need to decide what further action you could take. Describe how you intend to find out what impact the advocacy has had. In the meeting with Mr. Smith it was clear to us that we did have an impact on him. He considered our case and asked us many questions, fortunately we were able to answer them all. He was impressed with the support we had from within our school community and liked the fact that we had bothered to find out views from other organisations. We do not have to find out what impact our advocacy had because we had a letter from him to say that he had consulted with senior teachers and the governors and they granted us permission to go ahead with elections to establish a school council. He wants to meet us again to meet with the Heads of Year to organise the events. We were absolutely delighted with the news, our ideas had worked and we can now go on to the next stages. We think we should write back to Mr. Smith thanking him for permission to go ahead with a school council. How did your task affect others in your community? Our school community will never be the same again. Students will now be able to have their say in decision making and make a contribution to the school in many ways. It will take a while but I am sure that we will achieve all the things we set out to do in our aims in Stage 1. The conclusions were (say how effective your advocacy/action was). Our advocacy was very effective. We won our case - we can set up a school council. Did you persuade people to think again/change their view/support your cause? In what way(s)? We did persuade students and teachers to think about our cause. If some had been against it they either did not say so or they changed their mind, maybe because we found we had such a great amount of support, perhaps it is true that there is strength in numbers. We shall never know if Mr. Smith was against the idea in the beginning or was persuaded by our advocacy. The important thing is that there will be beneficial changes for all in our school community and we started the process. Did your advocacy/action have any impact on the wider world as a result of people s changed attitudes? Our advocacy did not have any immediate effect on the wider world. As the council starts to work, everyone in the school community will have first hand experience of elections, voting systems, some will know what it is like to stand for election and we will all have a better understanding of how democracy works. I hope that this means that in the future more students of our school will grow up to become active citizens and vote in local and national elections having listened to the candidates and made informed decisions. This then will have an impact on the wider world.
Describe what future action you could take to further your issue. In taking this further we will actually go on to organise elections, hold an election day, count the votes and announce the results. Then the process of holding regular meetings will begin with electing people to various jobs and making sure that the things discussed in the council were issues students had raised and that all the decisions taken were made known to students. Stage 4 Assess the impact. Teacher s Comments Sarah and her group achieved success in their advocacy. There are some very interesting observations in boxes 4 and 5 above about how persuasive they were and the impact on the wider world in the future. Relevant suggestions are made for future action. Teacher s Signature:... Date:... Level 0 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 No work worthy of a mark Presentation, spelling, punctuation and grammar seriously obstruct understanding. Gathered limited evidence to discover the opinions of others on the advocacy. Limited conclusions drawn from the evidence presented. A brief statement of opinion on the effectiveness of the action may be given. The aim or change made may be mentioned. Limited suggestions made for further action that could be taken. The text is usually legible. Some relevant information is presented in a simple form. Spelling, punctuation and grammar allow meaning to be derived, although errors are sometimes obstructive. Gathered some evidence to discover the opinions of others on the advocacy. Accurate conclusions drawn from the evidence presented. A statement of opinion is given on the effectiveness of the action in relation to the aim/change made. Relevant suggestions made for further action that could be taken. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented in a way which assists with the communication of meaning. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate not to obscure the meaning. Gathered appropriate evidence to discover the opinions of others on the advocacy/action. Logical and accurate conclusions drawn from the evidence presented. A clear statement of opinion given on the effectiveness of the action in relation to the aim/change made. Relevant range of suggestions made for further action that could be taken. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented coherently, employing structure and style. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate to render the meaning clear. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented coherently, employing structure and style. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate to render the meaning clear. Marks 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Stage 5 Reflect and Evaluate In this section you are expected to review your actions and evaluate how well the activity went, what changes were made or what changes could have been made to improve your advocacy/action. You are asked to evaluate your own contribution and that of others. You need to think of ways you could continue to take further responsible action. What were the different views and opinions about your issue? Different opinions about school councils are Positive help students to learn about democracy; how to take part in voting; learn about different voting systems; learn how meetings are run; members of the council put forward views from others and have to inform their year group about what decisions are taken Negative a waste of time; only a few people take part; they don t represent everyone; nothing ever changes so what s the point; we never find out what goes on. What citizenship skills did you learn and use in the activity? The citizenship skills we used were making judgements / decisions, active participation, representation, informing opinions, collaborative working, negotiation and tolerance. I learned more about making judgements, negotiation and how to be tolerant of other people s views and accept decisions made by the majority, which I didn t always agree with, but things turned out alright in the end. How has this task helped you to understand more about citizenship issues and concepts? The task has helped me to understand that to fight for a cause you really do have to believe in it. It is necessary to find out about different opinions concerned with the issue so that you can understand them and put the other side of the argument. I have learned how to go about presenting a case to achieve something you want that will bring a benefit to a lot of people in the school community and later on to the wider community when students leave school and become active citizens and participate in elections. How did your own contribution make the task successful? I carried out my roles and responsibilities to the best of my ability. I enjoyed the research and found out some good information to support our case. I created graphs to show how many Year 11 students wanted a school council using the computer programme. I wrote up the interview I had with Mrs Brown our Head of Year, and listed comments made by all the teachers I talked to. This all showed the amount of support we had generated for our cause. We each did a draft of a letter to Mr. Smith then in the next lesson chose the best from each for the final version. What did others do to make the task successful (people working in your group/any others who helped)? Ed, Sam, Anna and Kate all did much the same things as I did. We all worked together well. We did have some differences of opinion, but we were tolerant and listened to each others point of view then had to get on with it and accept the majority decision. In general we agreed who should take each part in the presentation. I think it was the right idea for all of us to write the letter then get together to choose the best from each, this way we all had a contribution and the final result was definitely a group effort and it did seem to have the right effect. Other people who helped were other students and teachers in giving their opinion and those teachers who said they would be involved if we got permission for a council.
To what extent did you achieve your aims? Our aims were :- a) find out if many students and teachers agree with us b) look at what happens in other schools c) find out information from websites to help us d) prepare our case d) to arrange a meeting with Mr. Smith (Head Teacher) to ask permission to establish a School Council present our case. We achieved all our aims and will set up a school council to make our school more democratic. Did your advocacy/activity have any unintended/unexpected consequences/results? No. How well were your plans carried out? What did you change and what could you do to improve the task if you were to do this again? I think we carried out our plans very well, we did achieve all our aims. We did not have to change anything, which is quite surprising. Our plans seemed to work out as they were. I don t know if there is anything we could have done to improve it. We all had a great commitment to what we were trying to achieve and we will make our school more democratic. Stage 5 Reflect and Evaluate. Teacher s Comments Sarah has referred back to where she started from in Stage 1 and has highlighted the main views associated with school councils. She has shown an awareness of citizenship skills but could have given more explanation. More detail could have been given about her own contribution and that of others, but as she says they did achieve their aims. She could have done more in the last section about carrying out her plans. This is not her best section. Teacher s Signature:... Date:... Award marks on next page
Level 0 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 No work worthy of a mark. Presentation, spelling, punctuation and grammar seriously obstruct understanding. Demonstrated limited understanding of different opinions. May have given short explanation of the citizenship skills used during the activity or a limited explanation of how the activity has increased their own understanding of the citizenship issue(s) involved. May have commented on their own contribution. The text is usually legible. Some relevant information is presented in a simple form. Spelling, punctuation and grammar allow meaning to be derived, although errors are sometimes obstructive. Demonstrated some understanding of different opinions and viewpoints on the issue. Given some explanation of the citizenship skills used during the activity. Explained briefly how the activity has increased their own understanding of the citizenship issue(s) involved. Evaluated their own contribution and that of others. Commented on how well the plans were carried out and offer some suggestion for improvements. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented in a way which assists with the communication of meaning. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate not to obscure the meaning. Demonstrated a good understanding of a range of different opinions and viewpoints on the issue. Given an explanation of the citizenship skills used during the activity. Explained how the activity has increased their own understanding of the citizenship issue(s) involved. Evaluated in some detail their own contribution and that of others. Evaluated how well the plans were carried out and offer suggestions for improvements. The text is legible. Relevant information is presented coherently, employing structure and style. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are sufficiently accurate to render the meaning clear. This document is available electronically from the AQA website (www.aqa.org.uk). Marks 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
GCSE Citizenship Studies Unit 2 Commentary on exemplar Controlled Assessment: Democracy. The candidate s work presented in the skills profile and the supporting comments from the teacher making the assessment would fall into the following levels within the mark scheme :- Stage 1 Level 3 8-10 marks Stage 2 Level 3 8-10 marks Stage 3 Level 5 17-20 marks Stage 4 Level 2 4-7 marks Stage 5 Level 2 4-7 marks