September 2024 Psychology subject update
Sun Sep 08 23:00:00 UTC 2024
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Welcome to your Pearson Edexcel Psychology September 2024 subject update.
Hello colleagues,
I hope you and your students have a smooth and enjoyable start to the new academic year, and that you have managed to have a good break from work over the (suddenly rather distant-seeming) summer!
This update contains some news from the British Psychological Society, updates on various upcoming training events and recordings of some recent ones, key dates for your diaries and reminders of the various post-results services available. If your students sat exams in the recent series, then ResultsPlus is a great tool for analysing their performance in comparison with the whole Edexcel cohort. As ever, if you need any help accessing or navigating services such as this, do get in touch!
For updates on the qualificaiton(s) you deliver, please see the relevant section below.
Best wishes,
Tim Lawrence
Psychology Subject Advisor
If you have any questions, then please do contact me:
☎ Call: 0344 463 2535
✉ Email: teachingpsychology@pearson.com
💻 Book a Teams meeting with me: https://bit.ly/4bBZjpB
This update includes:
- Key dates: for psychology teachers for this term.
- Post-results services: a reminder of the services available such as reviews of marking, ResultsPlus and Access to Scripts.
- Updates from the British Psychological Society: Psychology Teacher of the Year awards, the Teachers' Toolkit and joining SCoPESC.
- AS and A Level: recorded training, upcoming exam feedback training and news of new free resources we are producing.
- GCSE: recorded training, upcoming exam feedback training and New to Pearson training.
- International A Level: free New to Pearson training in October, express interest in examWizard support if you haven't already done so.
| 26 September 2024 | RoMM deadline | After this date you will no longer be able to request a review of marking or moderation through our enquiry about results service. |
| 7th October 2024 | A Level Exam Insights Training | Feedback on the May/June A Level Psychology exam series - free online training - 16:00-18:00. |
| 14th October 2024 | GCSE New to Pearson Training | Free online training for teachers new to the specification - 09:00-10:30. |
| 14th October 2024 | GCSE Exam Insights Training | Feedback on the May/June GCSE Psychology exam series - free online training - 16:00-17:30. |
| 16th Octobe 2024 | Getting Ready to Teach IAL Training Module 1 | Free online training for teachers new to International A Level Psychology - 09:00-11:00. |
| 17th October 2024 | Getting Ready to Teach IAL Training Module 2 | Free online training for teachers new to International A Level Psychology - 09:00-11:00. |
| 13 December 2024 | Access to scripts deadline | After this date you will no longer be able to view your students’ scripts using our free service. |
ResultsPlus is an online results analysis tool that gives you a detailed breakdown of your candidates’ performance in Edexcel exams.
ResultsPlus will help you to identify potential topics, skills and types of question where candidates struggled and this may support refinements to your teaching and learning approaches.
You may also find it helpful to understand how your candidates’ performance compares with class and national averages.
We have created two documents to help you and your students understand how grade boundaries have been calculated for 2024.
The assessment support page for each qualification provides you with the 2024 grade boundaries and grade statistics.
There is a link to each assessment support page under each of our four qualifications below.
The Access to Scripts service allows you to view your candidates’ marked scripts online or download as PDFs, providing transparency of marking and to help you make decisions around requests for reviews of marking and inform future teaching and learning.
The Access to Scripts service provides a rich source of information, enabling detailed analysis to inform teaching and learning and support students, giving insights and visibility that performance data alone cannot provide.
The portal can only be accessed by Edexcel Online users who have the 'Exam Viewer' profile ticked on Edexcel Online. Your exams officer gives teachers access to 'Exam Viewer'.
Please note that these scripts do not contain examiners' annotations.
If scripts have been marked 'traditionally' (i.e. not online), you will need to request them, free of charge, by the published deadline, via the Post Results section of Edexcel Online as in previous exam series.
Access To Scripts via Script Viewer is available from Results Day until 13 December 2024.
Candidate consent is required before requesting script copies, as per section 6.2.1 of the JCQ's Post-Results Services guide. Candidate consent can only be obtained after results have been published.
Candidate consent forms can be found in Appendix B of the JCQ Post results Services document.
Review of marking of externally assessed components (Service 2)
This is a check that our examiners have marked externally assessed components correctly and includes:
- a clerical check (Service 1)
- a review of marking of units/components by a senior examiner
You can ask us to review the marking of exam papers for individual candidates and the results for each candidate will be reported separately. This service isn't available for internally assessed/externally moderated coursework components.
Candidates’ marks or grades can go up, down or stay the same.
The deadline for completion is within 20 calendar days of receiving the request.
To get a copy of the reviewed exam paper, you should request an Access to Script (ATS) service at the same time as submitting the Service P2 request. There is a fee for this additional service.
The deadline for us to receive your request for a review of marking is 26 September.
Centres must obtain written candidate consent for clerical re-checks and
reviews of marking, as with these services candidates’ marks and subject grades may be lowered. Candidate consent must be obtained after the publication of results.
Candidates must be informed that their marks and subject grades could go
down as well as up and must provide their written consent before a request is submitted. (A suggested form for centres to use is included as Appendix A of the JCQ Post-results Guide).
If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of a review of marking, you may wish to appeal against the decision. We will allow the head of centre (or designated member of the centre’s senior management team or examinations manager) 30 calendar days from the receipt of the outcome of the review of marking, during which an appeal may be lodged
Applications for appeals may only be accepted from a head of centre (on behalf of a candidate or a group of candidates) or private candidates.
The British Psychological Society Division of Academics, Researchers and
Teachers in Psychology (DART-P) is holding its second pre-tertiary Education
Psychology Teacher of the Year awards. The award is designed to nationally
recognise the work of pre-university psychology teachers. All pre-university
psychology who are currently working in a UK educational institution on a
full-time, part-time or fixed term basis. The winner will receive £1000, free
Dart-P membership for a year and free registration for the June 2025 annual
DART-P conference. The deadline for applications is at noon on 27th September
2024.
The BPS has worked with the ATP (the Association for the Teaching of Psychology) to produce a free teachers' toolkit. The toolkit is suitable for teachers of all specifications and levels of pre-university courses and includes resources on a wide range of topics from open evening resources to research methods. The toolkit is updated 3 times a year (the summer upload has recently taken place) and includes a resource on ‘motivation boosters’ for students.
The BPS are always looking for new contributors for the toolkit! If anyone is interested in the doing so, they should contact Lyndsey Hayes at ps09lh@gmail.com with their name, email address and their toolkit idea.
SCoPESC is the voice of pre-university teachers in the UK and are looking for new members.
If anyone would like to join SCoPESC, further information can be found by
following the link below. You do not have to be a member of the BPS or DART-P to join SCoPESC. Anyone who is interested should email DARTP.mns@bps.org.uk
A new Pearson Edexcel Facebook page for UK academic qualifications will be officially launched on Monday 16th September. If you use Facebook, following this will be a great way to stay up-to-date with key news that affects our qualifications and services in general. We will also be setting up new Facebook groups for individual subjects and qualifications, including psychology, soon.
Monday 7th October 16:00 to 18:00
This event is to provide feedback from senior examiners on candidates' performance in all three of the Summer 2024 A Level exam papers, with advice for teachers preparing students for future exams.
In July we ran online 'New to Pearson' A Level psychology training, and you can now view the recording via the link below. This is aimed at teachers who are new or relatively new to the course, or who are considering switching. However experienced teachers may find the exemplar responses used helpful, and these can be downloaded via a link in the desription along with the marks awarded and examiner commentary, in the delegate booklet.
We are committed to improving all our qualifications in terms of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Psychology offers many important opportunities to address such issues, and our specification's ‘key questions’ give teachers the flexibility to address issues of their choosing which affect contemporary society. We know from your feedback that you would welcome free lesson resources that help you to teach complex topics and to expose students to more diverse and modern research, and we have begun work on a new set of resources to support you.
We are not currently looking at any changes to specification content, so teachers who are happy with their teaching materials and lesson plans will not need to make any changes. However we hope that many of you will be excited by the chance to teach about some new studies which we think will engage students and enhance their answers to extended response questions. These resources will take some time to finalise but we hope to have an example ready to share with you soon, and we will advertise this in a future update.
Monday 14th October 16:00 to 17:30
This event is to provide feedback from senior examiners on candidates' performance in both of the Summer 2024 GCSE exam papers, with advice for teachers preparing students for future exams.
In July we ran online 'New to Pearson' GCSE psychology training, and you can now view the recording via the link below. This is aimed at teachers who are new or relatively new to the course, or who are considering switching. However experienced teachers may find the exemplar responses used helpful, and these can be downloaded via a link in the desription along with the marks awarded and examiner commentary, in the delegate booklet.
Although we do not offer an International GCSE course in psychology, our UK GCSE course is available to international centres and is straightforward to deliver as all the assessment is through the two exam papers.
These free online CPD sessions (module 1 and module 2) scheduled for October run from 9.00-11.00 UK time making them easier for teachers in Asia to attend, but UK based teachers available at this time are equally welcome!
This training is designed for teachers who are new to, or relatively new to, teaching our International A Level course. Module 1 and module 2 are free online events and will run from 9.00-11.00 UK time.
The dates of these sessions are being reviewed following feedback that a number of teachers cannot attend these due to school holidays. Our advice is to register if you are interested in the training and you will receive updates of any changes this way.
Recordings of these sessions will be made available on our YouTube channel - they should be published with three weeks of the date of the training and we will share links in a future update.
Video training from the senior examiners giving feedback on the May/June 2024 exam series is under production and we will share the link in a future update when it is published shortly.
Our free examWizard tool allows teachers to easily search for past papers, mark schemes and examiner reports, and to build their own class assessments by searching the database of past paper questions. Smaller subjects such as IAL Psychology are not currently supported due to the high costs involved, but we continue to look into the possibility of adding support for this qualification.
If you would use examWizard for IAL psychology and you did not complete our form earlier this year, please do so now.
Subject advisor
Tim Lawrence
Psychology
Email :
Phone :
+44 (0) 344 463 2535
(Teaching Services team | Mon - Fri, 8am - 5pm GMT)
