H446 NEA

Introduction

H446/03, the non-examined assessment (NEA), is worth 20% of your A-level grade. The amount of time most students spend on their NEAs is usually disproportionately large considering this relatively small weighting. In total, Cambridge OCR expect students to spend around 140 hours on the NEA [1]. It is possible to succeed at the NEA with fewer than 100 pages of work, including tables and screenshots of evidence.

The NEA is presented as an extended programming project—though most of the marks you gain will come from writing about your programming, rather than the programming itself. You are rewarded for demonstrating an effective, well-planned, and reflective development process, and are not necessarily penalised if you do not have a finished product at the end.

There is no ‘correct’ way to write or structure your NEA. You will receive marks as long as you demonstrate the mark band criteria. The advices on these pages is aimed at enabling you to present and think about your work efficiently.

Things you should read

The guidance presented here is my advice based on my experience delivering the NEA and lots of time reading moderator reports and other training material. You should not assume it covers everything and instead use it conjunction with documentation from JCQ, Cambridge OCR, and your teachers.

In particular, you should to take the time to read:

• JCQ’s latest information for candidates about NEAs (click through to the page about NEAs)
  • This JCQ guidance is mandatory reading for any students undertaking NEAs.
• JCQ’s latest information for candidates about social media (click to download the social media PDF)
  • This is similarly mandatory reading for all students doing NEAs.
• H446 specification
  • The specification contains detailed information about the NEA including the full mark scheme.
• Cambridge OCR Project setting guidance
  • Cambridge OCR’s project setting guidance offers suggestions for different kinds of projects and words of caution for common pitfalls. It also offers advice on key parts of the NEA, including the use of stakeholders.
• NEA requirements
  • To understand most of the things required of your NEA, synthesised from Cambridge OCR and JCQ guidance.

Doing well

Students who get the highest marks consistently justify the development and design choices that they make. They demonstrate an iterative approach, reflecting on their mistakes and using these reflections to justify changes in direction. Successful students work on NEAs that challenge them, demonstrate computational complexity, and often require them to learn new things.

The most successful students produce a write-up that shows a clear story: explicating the relationship between analysis, design, development, and evaluation (e.g., justifying development decisions based on needs identified at the outset of the project). The most successful students produce a coherent write-up where each of their main chapters reference and inform each other.

Structure

The NEA is usually written in four main chapters covering the following assessment objectives (AOs): 

• Analysis (AO 2.2) 
• Initial design (AO 3.1)
• Continuous design and development (AO 3.1, AO 3.2) 
• Evaluation (AO 3.3)

These chapters align with the mark scheme (discussed in more detail below), but should not limit you. The mark scheme criteria are credited wherever they are found, even if they are outside their obvious ‘home’—though your teachers will thank you for presenting your work clearly and intentionally.

A living document

While your write-up will likely be organised in chapters like the above, it should fundamentally be thought of as a living document that records all the complexities and challenges of your development process. 

Evaluation, for example, is credited wherever it takes place. While you will likely do the bulk of your evaluation at the end, there is some overlap between AO 3.3 and AO 3.2 which requires you to “show review at all key stages in the process.” Such review is often evidenced with evaluation throughout development rather than solely at the end. Likewise, the process of development is often closely related to that of design: before you implement a subprogram, you might design it.

Keep moving forwards

One of the main benefits of thinking of your write-up as a living document is that it gives you permission to keep moving forwards. If you realise that you missed something or made a mistake, it is fine to take a brief detour to adjust. Do not worry about going back to rewrite entire sections of your write-up as this can kill your momentum and muddy the scope of your adjustments. Instead, introduce your changes in a way that justifies them and clearly signals that ‘this is now what I am working from’. The mark scheme rewards reflection and revision when they are clearly justified.

Marking

The full mark scheme is in pp. 22–25 of the H446 specification. 

The assessment objectives (AOs) and marks available are as follows: 

• Analysis (AO 2.2) (10 marks) 
• AO 3.1 Design (15 marks) 
• AO 3.2 Developing the coded solution (25 marks total): 
  • Iterative development of a coded solution (15 marks) 
  • Testing to inform development (10 marks) 
• Evaluation (AO 3.3) (20 marks total): 
  • Testing to inform evaluation (5 marks) 
  • Evaluation of solution (15 marks)

The NEA is marked with a best-fit approach across four mark bands for each of the above AOs. This means that your final mark in each of the categories will reflect the ‘average’ description of your work. This best-fit approach rewards sustained consistency in quality and penalises inconsistency. Instances of poor work will negatively impact your overall mark in each section; likewise, a single instance of divinely-inspired work will not salvage an otherwise poor submission.

The highest scoring students consistently meet all the criteria in the highest mark bands throughout their project in its entirety.

The above sections are marked separately. This means a poor evaluation will not result in you losing marks for your analysis. However, due to the compounding nature of the project, a poor analysis section may limit your ability to gain marks in later sections. For example, if you fail to identify the requirements of your solution in your analysis, you will struggle to evaluate your solution against its requirements.

Finally, your overall mark for a section may be adjusted down if you do not produce work of sufficient quantity. While you might write an immaculate commentary about developing a single subprogram, if this single subprogram is the extent of your development you will likely have failed to demonstrate the sustained consistency expected by the mark scheme so should not expect to receive full marks.

Document first

Do not think of this work as a programming project: it is a documentation project with programming attached.

Your write-up and included evidence are the only things that get marked. You may choose to submit your codebase as an appendix to the write-up but your write-up should be comprehensive enough in its coverage of your development, including examples of your code, that this is not necessary.

Only one of the AOs directly assesses your code quality (AO 3.2 Iterative development of a coded solution) and it is only worth 15 marks. Even this AO does not exclusively credit your code, it also covers the evidencing of your development process. You cannot complete the NEA without writing code but you cannot get marks without writing.

Don’t work backwards

It can be really tempting to plough on with development and leave your documentation until later. Don’t.

Writing code and trying to retrofit a design is problematic for two reasons:

• it wastes your time in the blind exploration mode of programming;
• it costs you marks.

Often, it is extremely obvious when students retrofit a design to an implementation. Such designs lack the richness and depth of exploration and are poorer as a result. Inconsistency in quality is penalised with the best-fit marking of the NEA. When a design has been reverse-engineered, you should not expect to receive credit for it as, at this point, it is not a design [2].

Plan first; code later. Your code—and grade—will be better for it.

Own your work 

It is vital that the work you submit is your own and reflects your own thinking. JCQ have extremely clear guidelines about what it means for work to be your own. You must read JCQ’s latest information for candidates about NEAs to understand your obligations around referencing and your intellectual ownership of your work.

My own recommendations are included on the academic honesty page.

Grade boundaries

There are a maximum of 70 marks available. 

You can read the full record of historic grade boundaries on Cambridge OCR’s website. A sample of historic grade boundaries is included here for convenience.