AQA GCSE Biology Past Papers and Syllabus Now Available Online

Past papers for AQA GCSE Biology are now available online here at London Science Tutors Student Resources. Past Paper practice should form a core part of your exam preparation and revision.

Discuss the best approach to using these past papers with your tutor. For most of our students, we suggest doing the past papers between tutoring sessions. We can then use the teaching time to discuss any issues you had with the paper as well as to clarify unclear concepts. We have found this to be a very effective approach for preparing for the exam – especially if there is a tight time constraint.

We recommend you sit a number of past papers under examination conditions prior to your actual exam. This will allow you to identify areas of your exam technique which may require further focus; for example pacing the questions, use of calculator functions, providing clear working for solutions etc. For certain syllabuses there are not many past papers, in which case we are happy to help by identifying appropriate questions from other examinations which would provide practice.

Approach to Past Papers
We suggest you sit the past papers under exam conditions in order for the practice to be most effective. This means ideally sitting the paper in a quiet room free from distractions – having only your calculator and data sheet to hand. Consider setting an alarm to indicate the allocated time.

Understandably you may have some difficulty completing the paper in the required time when starting your revision, however you will undoubtedly improve and get faster with practice. Should you run out of time, indicate how far you reached on the paper so that you have a measure of your exam speed to discuss with your tutor.

The practice will allow you to become comfortable with the style of question that comes up in the exam, as well as the best approach to tackling a question. This is particularly useful for synoptic questions requiring knowledge from different parts of the syllabus.

Although exam boards provide mark schemes, these should in no way be taken as “model answers”, but simply as providing a minimal indication of where marks are to be awarded.

If you have any further questions regarding the best use of past papers and exam technique, please talk with your tutor, or contact us directly.

Mark Schemes
You can request the Mark Schemes for a question paper from your tutor. Please note that the Mark Schemes are NOT a set of model answers, but rather discuss the allocation of marks in the question paper. Many questions can be answered using multiple approaches – which you can discuss with your tutor during your session.

Should you have any questions about the past papers, feel free to discuss with your tutor or alternatively contact us directly.

Comments are closed.