A-level PE deep dive - How have the 2016 PE specifications performed and what can be learned?

Mar 11, 2026 4:45:00 PM

Two weeks ago, I published "You're standing on the shoulders of giants - An open letter to everyone involved in the curriculum review for GCSE and A-level PE". Last week, I followed it with a "Deep dive into the 2016 GCSE PE specifications: what they got right, what they got wrong, and what should happen next".

This post completes the trilogy. And if the GCSE post was uncomfortable, this one might be more so.

Because here's the thing: A-level PE should be the crown jewel of our subject. It should be the qualification that proves, beyond question, that Physical Education is a rigorous academic discipline worthy of standing alongside biology, chemistry or history. It should be the qualification that makes university admissions tutors nod rather than raise an eyebrow. It should be the qualification that students and parents choose with pride, not as a fallback.

And it isn't. Not yet. Not consistently.

I would give the 2016 A-level PE specifications a 6 out of 10. Two of the courses (AQA and OCR) are good, and I want to be clear about that. But even they lack the aspiration to be a truly rigorous, high-quality A-level qualification. A-level PE does not provide equivalent rigour to A-level biology, chemistry or history. We need to be honest about this. If we want our subject to be valued as we value it, it has to be rigorous enough to demand respect. Even AQA and OCR drop the ball on the rigour point.

I would argue the A-level specifications are stronger than their GCSE counterparts overall, but with significant flaws, and some of those flaws are ones we inflicted on ourselves.

Let me explain.

My confession

Early in my career, I accepted things about A-level PE that I now know were wrong. I accepted that biomechanics was "too hard" for most PE students and probably belonged in a niche corner of the course. I accepted that the sociocultural units were, by nature, a bit dry and that memorising lists of advantages and disadvantages was just "how socio works." I accepted that A-level PE would always be seen as a softer option compared to the traditional sciences.

I was wrong on all three counts. And it took years of recording over a thousand videos, writing thousands of quiz questions and genuinely living inside every line of every specification to understand why.

The depth is the point. The hard bits are the good bits. And the reason A-level PE lacks credibility is not that the subject itself is weak - the material is extraordinary - but that we have lacked the ambition to present it with the rigour it deserves.

Where these specifications came from

The 2016 A-level PE specifications did not appear from nowhere. They were part of the same government-wide reform programme that reshaped GCSEs. In April 2014, the Secretary of State announced that PE would be among the subjects reformed for first teaching in September 2016. The Department for Education published a consultation on proposed A-level PE subject content in July 2014, running through to September, while Ofqual ran a parallel consultation on assessment arrangements.

By January 2015, the final GCE AS and A-level subject content for Physical Education had been published. This mandated content across applied anatomy and physiology, biomechanical movement, skill acquisition, sport psychology, sport and society, and the role of technology in sport. A-level-only extensions included energy systems, angular and projectile motion, fluid mechanics, memory models, attribution theory, self-efficacy, leadership, stress management, ethics, talent identification and commercialisation. A minimum of 5% quantitative skills was introduced, and students would be assessed in a single practical activity as performer or coach.

Ofqual's subject-level conditions and final rules for reformed PE qualifications followed in July 2015. Exam boards then had roughly a year to translate the framework into full specifications, sample assessments and teacher guidance - a timeline that now feels impossibly tight given what was being asked of them.

Two structural changes were enormous. First, AS and A-levels were decoupled: AS results would no longer count towards the A-level grade. Second, assessment became fully linear: all exams were at the end of a two-year course. Universities were given a greater role in shaping content, and the intention was to create qualifications that were more demanding, more coherent and more respected.

First teaching began in September 2016. First AS assessment followed in 2017, and first full A-level assessment in 2018. The specifications we have today (from AQA (7582), OCR (H555), Edexcel/Pearson, WJEC/Eduqas and CIE) are the result of that process.

The question this post asks is simple: how have they performed?

The three pillars of failure

That's a provocative heading. Let me justify it.

I believe the 2016 A-level PE specifications have three fundamental content weaknesses. Not minor quibbles. Structural failures that undermine the rigour and credibility of the entire qualification. They are: the watering down of biomechanics, the gutting of historical studies, and the reduction of sociocultural content to rote-learned lists.

Biomechanics: the golden ticket we threw away

Colleagues, this is a biggy.

Pre-2016, OCR A-level PE offered biomechanics as an entire unit option. That unit was rigorous and, in relative terms, complete. Students could study it as a replacement for Sport Psychology, and the course contained wonderful levels of applied learning and -heaven forbid - calculations throughout. It was demanding. It was scientific. And students who engaged with it properly came out the other side with a genuine understanding of how forces, levers and motion govern sports performance.

AQA pre-2016 included biomechanics within a compulsory unit, combined with exercise physiology. It was awkward, poorly written and even contained glaring errors. But at least it was there.

From 2016, both boards moved biomechanics into a subsection of an exam paper. Paper 1 Physiological Factors unit for OCR, where biomechanics sits as a partner to A&P and exercise physiology. Paper 2 for AQA, where biomechanics continues to be herded into the exercise physiology section. OCR shifted towards the AQA methodology: worked applications reduced, calculations became rare and the content shrank. The course that AQA wrote for 2016 was better than its predecessor, but it remained what I would call a tokenistic nod to biomechanics, not a thorough area of study.

Here's what both boards failed to recognise, and what I believe with every fibre of my professional being: A-level biomechanics is the golden ticket. It is the single area of the course that provides rigour within a logical and scientific framework. PE students can use their existing maths and science skills and build an applied framework of understanding that is specifically performance-related. Unlike much of our content in exercise physiology and sport psychology, biomechanics is understanding-based rather than content-based.

That distinction matters. Content-based topics can be memorised. Understanding-based topics must be learned. And it is the understanding-based elements that give A-level PE its claim to scientific credibility.

Let me give you the specifics of what has been lost or diluted:

Angular motion has been watered down from previous specifications. Currently, students learn angular motion but do not know what radians are or how to convert radians to degrees. Instead, angular motion has become a scripted response from students who probably don't truly understand what moment of inertia actually is.
Projectile motion and fluid mechanics have improved slightly. AQA, to their credit, corrected a bizarre pre-2016 method for representing vectors on projectiles. But the content has become formulaic. There is no reference to venturimeters, which help unlock the Bernoulli principle. Spinning objects are largely limited to top and backspin, with side spin not really being learned fully. The effects of spin on bounce (a post-projectile motion topic) have been removed entirely. And downforce, a critical concept for understanding sports performance, is only expected superficially.
Energy systems were always part of the course, but in 2016, PE teachers were once again expected to teach them "the PE way" rather than the correct way. A student studying A-level biology learns energy systems differently from the same student studying A-level PE. Why? This is the credibility problem I keep returning to.

If we want A-level PE to be respected, biomechanics is how we earn that respect. It is where our subject overlaps with physics, mathematics or engineering. It is where students can calculate, draw graphs, interpret data and demonstrate genuine scientific reasoning. And we have spent a decade watering it down.

Historical studies: the context we erased

So much was lost.

The previous two iterations of A-level PE specifications had strong themes of sociocultural study, and the course was far better for it. The 2016 courses undervalued sociocultural content dramatically and almost entirely removed the historical component. OCR hung on with their emergence and evolution section, and AQA did similar, but these are remnants, fragments of what was once a rigorous and fascinating area of study.

Let me make this concrete. Let's say a 16-year-old today watches the Winter Olympics or Paralympics. From their A-level PE studies, they may tell you that de Coubertin founded the modern Olympic Games and that he visited England. But they absolutely cannot tell you why.

They cannot tell you about the role of industrialisation in the UK. They cannot tell you about the rapid growth in demand for elite public schools, the development of Philistine schools, and the emergence of the cult of athleticism within those schools. They cannot tell you how modern sport emerged as a middle-class vehicle for character building, or that the working classes rejected it and redefined these "posh sports" in their own image. They cannot tell you about schisms and exclusion clauses. They cannot tell you about the birth of compulsory education and, eventually, compulsory PE.

Instead, they are expected to write essays about the commercialisation of sport in the 20th and 21st centuries without this backdrop. It's crazy.

Once again, we see a case where - because students find the history of sport challenging and heavy-going, often because the teacher doesn't truly understand it - we decide to water it down to make it more "accessible." Ridiculous. Learning –true learning– can be challenging at times. It should be. A young person cannot understand movement in context without a historical studies unit.

Sociocultural content: the rote-learning trap

The pure scale of sociocultural study at A-level dramatically decreased in the 2016 specifications, and this has had knock-on impacts that we are only now fully understanding. The sociocultural content features last on the specification lists, and it seems to receive less scrutiny from the exam boards than other areas.

Let me show you the pattern. Take topics like technology (see 'How to teach technology in PE lessons'), media, sponsorship and commercialisation (see "Teaching the commercialisation of sport in PE lessons"). The structure of the course is to identify a subgroup and then ask students to evaluate: "Evaluate the impact of sponsorship on performers"; "Evaluate the impact of media on spectators"; "Evaluate the impact of commercialisation on officials."

These types of structures force teachers to deliver lists of strengths and weaknesses of each topic on each group and ask students to memorise them. The biggest issue with this is that it is tedious, uninteresting, non-intuitive and - here's the devastating irony - it actually blocks the true skill of evaluation from taking place.

When I wrote recently about teaching technology and commercialisation in PE lessons, I tried to show what genuine evaluation looks like, compared to the list-learning that the current specifications incentivise. The response from colleagues confirmed what I suspected: teachers know this isn't working, but the specification structure leaves them little choice.

And then there is the technology topic itself (see "How to teach technology in PE lessons"). Every course expects students to parrot-learn a series of advantages and disadvantages of technology to different groups. This is a classic example of old, high-quality sociocultural content being replaced with near-pointless material that can be rote-learned. It has been, to use a word I don't deploy lightly, horrendous.

The decoupling problem

The decoupling of AS from A-level was a government-wide structural change, not specific to PE. But its impact on our subject has been significant and, I believe, underappreciated.

If one steps back, students from 2016 to today have studied for two years and received exactly one qualification. Prior to 2016, students were typically studying for the same two years, covering an approximately equivalent range of content, and achieving exactly two qualifications: an AS PE grade and an A2/A-level PE grade. This was a far better deal for the student.

Since decoupling, the burden on schools and colleges has reduced because exam entries are fewer. The burden on exam boards has reduced because they need to write and manage half the exam papers they previously did. It is a clear example of exam-board economics and the sixth-form funding formula being prioritised over student opportunities.

Furthermore, the possibility of students redirecting onto other qualifications (including to AS PE in Year 2) has been eliminated. Sixth forms have, understandably, encouraged students to study exactly three A-levels based on the funding formula. Students who make the "wrong" choices at age 16 are far more burdened with their original decision than they should be.

PE is a classic subject to be selected as a third or, in previous years, fourth choice. The shift away from AS qualifications has made the decision to study PE at A-level harder for exactly the students who would benefit most from studying it.

Board by board: an honest verdict

Both AQA and OCR have produced good A-level PE courses overall. Let me be clear about that. But "good" is not "high quality," and both boards have weaknesses that need addressing. Edexcel, WJEC and CIE play smaller roles in the A-level landscape, but they deserve honest assessment too.

All PE exam boards would benefit from greater access to a deep subject expert on A-level PE and, given all the great work that the exam boards do, I offer my time and support to AQA, or indeed OCR or Edexcel, to this end.

AQA - Good, with serious caveats

Strengths:

Consistently high cohort numbers, making it a well-established and well-resourced choice.
Clear differentiation of command words. ‘Analyse’ means ‘analyse’ and ‘Evaluate’ means ‘evaluate’. This sounds basic, but as we'll see, not every board manages it.
AQA has managed to maintain a small proportion of sports history that is genuinely needed at A-level: public school influence, popular and rational recreation, and the rationalisation and development of football, tennis and athletics.
Clear connections between the AQA GCSE PE course and the AQA A-level PE course, showing a genuine progression route.
An improved biomechanics unit compared to pre-2016. There are still weaknesses, but it is better than it was.
A good exercise physiology unit, including concepts that serve as reasonable preparation for future sports science study.

Weaknesses:

Low grade boundaries, at times, suggest that cohorts of students are not meeting the rigour of the exams. The course has developed a reputation for "accessibility" in grade-boundary terms.
Over-burdensome extended-writing requirements. 138 out of 210 exam marks across Paper 1 and Paper 2 are awarded for extended writing. That's 66% of the entire exam assessment devoted to extended responses. This means the exam is overly focused on one skill, and - critically - some topics will never be assessed because the scale of marks per question forces a narrow range of topics to be examined in any given paper.
Synopticity is abstract and sometimes contrived. There are three synoptic questions per series, which is fine in principle, but some attempts at synopticity require students to figure out what the examiner is thinking rather than demonstrating genuine synoptic skill.
The asynchronous coursework has no future. AI makes the nature of this coursework unsustainable.
The coursework can be completed orally, but to our knowledge, virtually no one does it this way. This means AQA has little to no experience of oral coursework as we move toward a future where synchronous assessment will very likely be a feature of A-level PE.
The required standard of examples within exam answers is inconsistent. Sometimes examples require a discussion of impact and outcome - as they should - and other times, superficial examples are credited. This is confusing to PE teachers and students alike.
The synoptic elements requiring specific knowledge from Paper 1 and Paper 2 force students to revise the entire course for both papers. Writing pragmatically: this is extremely unlikely to be achieved by almost any PE student.

OCR - Good, with frustrating flaws

Strengths:

Consistently high cohort numbers.
The EAPI oral coursework is future-ready in the era of AI. This is essential. We need synchronous assessments, and OCR has built one that works.
The three-exam-paper structure allows a wide range of content to be examined each series, which is better for students and better for the integrity of the qualification.
The extended writing burden of 40 out of 210 marks across three papers is close to the right balance. It allows for many substantial but non-extended-writing questions at a scale of six marks or similar. Compare that to AQA's 138/210, and you begin to see the structural difference.
The biomechanics unit is the best example across all exam boards. It is far from perfect, but it is better than other examples.
Synopticity is intra-paper, meaning unrealistic revision burdens are not placed on students to revise the entire course for each exam paper. Students can prepare pragmatically.

Weaknesses:

The A-level is dramatically harder than the GCSE with OCR. In other words, OCR GCSE PE is not sound preparation for OCR A-level PE. I said this in my GCSE Deep Dive, and it bears repeating here from the A-level perspective: students arriving from OCR GCSE are measurably less prepared.
OCR continues to use the exam commands of ‘Analyse’ and ‘Evaluate’ almost interchangeably. Let us be clear: ‘Analyse’ requires the student to break concepts into parts and explain them. ‘Evaluate’ requires looking at a concept from at least two perspectives and forming a judgement. OCR needs to address this urgently. We are now into the second OCR A-level PE specification with this unnecessary flaw.
There have been significant concerns about the challenge levels of the EAPI coursework and its moderation, with centre adjustments being very common. This suggests that OCR is failing to accurately guide PE teachers on the delivery of that assessment.
The historical aspects of the sociocultural unit are extremely weak. The section titled Emergence and Evolution is tokenistic and cannot be taught as a complete historical unit. The section on the Olympic Games is poor: it demands a vague understanding of the background of the modern games and then a hyper-superficial understanding of the political influences of multiple iterations of the summer games. This is not real learning. The relevant ideas have been stripped away from the course, leaving a shell of a topic.

The extended-writing contrast

This deserves its own moment because the numbers are striking.

Board	Extended-writing marks	Total exam marks	Extended writing %
AQA	138	210	66%
OCR	40	210	19%

Two boards, interpreting the same DfE framework, arriving at dramatically different assessment structures. AQA's model means that extended writing dominates the exam experience and narrows the range of topics that can be examined in any series. OCR's model allows for a broader range of question types and a wider coverage of the specification. Neither is perfect, but the contrast tells you something important about how much latitude the framework gave exam boards - and how differently they used it.

Edexcel - Small and struggling

Edexcel accounts for approximately 9% of the A-level PE cohort - a very small pool. The dangers of having one's students assessed within such a small candidature are real and underappreciated. The Paper 1 Scientific Factors exam is a 2.5-hour paper worth 140 raw marks, which is a genuinely burdensome single sitting. Very few course resources are available beyond those provided on TheEverLearner.com, and the textbook is, to be blunt, terrible.

That said, there is something intriguing within the Edexcel sociocultural units: a broader study of commercialisation and internationalism in sport that goes further than what AQA and OCR offer in that domain. It's a rare example of Edexcel doing something arguably better than the bigger boards.

WJEC - Compulsory for Wales

WJEC A-level PE is compulsory for all Welsh centres and effectively mirrors the AQA and OCR course structures. However, there are questionable aspects of exam-paper quality and, especially, mark-scheme quality that colleagues should be aware of.

CIE AS - International only

CIE offers Physical Education at AS level only - there is no full A-level. It has some traction in international schools, but its scope is limited, and it plays no role in the mainstream UK A-level landscape.

Stagnation and credibility

A-level PE entries have been remarkably flat: approximately 12,035 in 2023, 11,815 in 2024, and essentially unchanged at 11,815 in 2025. Is that stability? Or stagnation?

For me, it's stagnation. And the issue is credibility.

PE teachers like to think that their subject isn't respected or is seen as less rigorous. But they like to hear far less that there are elements of A-level PE that are not respectable and are non-rigorous. If we want a popular, respected and growing A-level PE sector, the only way to achieve that is to create a high-rigour but clear and fair qualification with a robust subject knowledge base.

Here's what I believe with total conviction: A-level PE can be a leading A-level qualification in the UK. All of the core material is there. But we lack the ambition to create the framework for the subject to explode.

There are structural disadvantages, but there are fewer than people perceive. For example, many people believe A-level PE cannot be part of an application for a degree in medicine. It absolutely can be. I've written about this extensively, across three separate posts, because this myth needs dismantling. We need to challenge the narratives around A-level PE and make students, parents, PE teachers and school leaders value it far more than they currently do.

And theory through practical? It applies at A-level too. It is essential. A-level PE students must experience learning through, not just about, movement. There are some limitations (the sociocultural units, for instance), but practical application can be achieved through swathes of the course. If we default to classroom-only delivery at A-level, we are making the same mistake I described in the GCSE post, and we are doing it at a level where the connection between theory and performance should be even more vivid.

What to protect, what to reform

If I could sit across the table from the review panel, here is what I would ask them to consider.

Protect	Reform
Oral coursework assessment as structured by OCR. This is essential in the era of AI. We need synchronous assessments of this kind.	Sociocultural domain: Reintegrate greater elements of historical studies. Students cannot understand sport in context without this foundation.
Synopticity across domains. PE is an interconnected subject, and synopticity allows that interconnection to be learned, demonstrated and rewarded.	Biomechanics: Enable a full domain of study, including the skills of calculation, graph drawing and interpretation. This is the golden ticket.
Assessment of one sport only. We do not want to return to a two-sport assessment model.	The biological basis of anatomy, physiology and exercise physiology. We need a robust, verifiable, applied biological subject basis that would stand up as accurate in any subject department in a school, from biology to chemistry to history.

These are not abstract wishes. They are specific, defensible positions that I believe would transform A-level PE from a good qualification into a genuinely respected one.

An invitation to disagree - and a thought about what comes next

I know this post challenges accepted positions, and I fully expect some of you will disagree with me, perhaps strongly. If you think I'm too harsh on the specifications, tell me. If you think I'm not harsh enough, tell me that too. If you teach Edexcel A-level PE and you think I've been unfair, I genuinely want to hear your experience. Please use the blog comments below, or email me directly at james@theeverlearner.com. I read everything.

I also want to say something about what comes next for me. Over the course of these three posts - the open letter, the GCSE deep dive, and now this - I've found myself moving from criticism towards construction. It's not enough to say what's wrong. At some point, you have to show what "better" looks like.

I'm considering writing my own draft A-level PE specification. Not as an act of arrogance, but as an act of ambition. To show what a rigorous, clear, fair and genuinely exciting A-level PE course could look like if we stopped being afraid of the hard bits and started trusting our students and our teachers. I'm fairly confident I will write it. And when I do, I'll ask you - the PE community - to review it, challenge it, and help me make it better.

Watch this space.

Thank you for reading. This trilogy of posts has been the most challenging writing I've produced for The Changing Rooms, and I'm grateful for every colleague who has read, responded and pushed back. That's how we get better.

Have a wonderful week, colleagues.

James

A Level PE

A-level PE deep dive - How have the 2016 PE specifications performed and what can be learned?

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