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Editor's note: This post was originally released in May 2023 and has been updated to make it relevant for teachers supporting their students with their 2024 PE and Sport exams.
Dear AQA GCSE PE student,
Yes, you! The one reading this post. I wanted to ask for a few moments of your time in order to share with you a few ideas about how to really prepare sharply for your AQA GCSE PE Paper 2 exam.
With the Paper 1 exam behind you – I hope it went well! –, I want to share some guidance for AQA GCSE PE Paper 2.
The aim of this post is to give you 10 ideas that you can use to prepare better for your exam. Follow these guidelines as part of a thorough revision experience and I am confident you will fly.
My 10 top tips:- Practise lots and lots of four-markers.
- Learn the command terms and what they mean.
- Be prepared to explain.
- Use the E-I-O method when making examples.
- Know Classification of skill and the Advantages and disadvantages of PEDs inside out.
- Use the TEL planning documents for your six- and nine-mark answers.
- Choose your synoptic links ahead of time.
- Complete and mark the National Mock Exam.
- Learn our model answers.
- Watch our revision sessions in May.
You will notice that none of these top tips involve common sense advice such as eating well, exercising regularly and getting enough sleep. You don’t need me to tell you these things. Instead, we’ll be focusing on the key behaviours that lead to success.
Top Tip #1 Practise lots and lots of four-markers
Well, this one is pretty obvious. On average, four-mark questions make up a third of all of the marks on an AQA GCSE PE Paper 2 exam. Take a look at this graph:
On average, 31 raw marks come from four-mark questions. Therefore, there is nothing more impacting that you can do in order to prepare for your Paper 2 exam than to practise writing and marking four-mark questions.
There are hundreds of examples available for you to practise on. If you do not already have access to ExamSimulator via TheEverLearner.com, speak to your teacher about this. Within this system, there are hundreds four-markers for you to engage with as well as every other question type.
Top Tip #2 Learn the command terms and what they mean
It is so easy to think of your exams as testing your knowledge… Well, they do, of course. But your exams (and, in this case, your AQA GCSE PE Paper 2 exam) also test your skills.
The skills that you need to perform have a degree of consistency. Identify (often for one mark) is obvious but take a look at describing, explaining and justifying (which dipped in 2022). If you are able to really understand the requirements of these skills, you are going to develop an excellent advantage.
So, what do these skills actually mean? Take a look at the table below and start to think about how to respond when asked to develop each different skill. I also encourage you to highlight the skills that appear most commonly on AQA GCSE PE Paper 2 exams.
Top Tip #3 Be prepared to explain
As you can see above, explaining is a key skill. AQA consider that explaining means:
In other words, you need to be able to state “how” and/or “why” for every single topic on the course. Simply knowing a definition or being able to describe a concept will, within explain responses, not be enough.
Let’s take an example. Let’s say I get two different questions about the same topic. The answers to each question are completely different. Let’s have a go:
Now, if I changed Q2 to “Explain how James blogs,” can you see how the answer would change? Do you agree that we may need to talk about my use of English, my computer, my website and even processes such as getting the articles proofread and a graphic designer making the imagery? Can you see that my answer is specific to the question posed? You need to do this.
If you are asked to explain, which you will be, you must explain! Here’s some language that you should use in your explain responses:
| Explain why... | Explain how... |
| because | through |
| this means | by |
| as a result | via |
| therefore | as a result of |
| the reason for this | caused by |
Just like you prepare for your knowledge, you need to prepare for your skills. I will take this further below.
Top Tip #4 Use the E-I-O method when making examples
AO2 skills (otherwise known as making examples) is the second biggest feature of a successful AQA GCSE PE Paper 2 performance:
On average, 26 marks come from making examples effectively. Therefore, you need to prepare for this and I encourage you to use the E-I-O method. Thankfully, this is nice and simple:
When you make your example, you MUST state the impact and the outcome of the concept on the example. Let’s take our own example:
Our author has clearly stated what the example is (manual guidance in table tennis), has stated the impact of the concept/manual guidance and has gone on to state the outcome of the concept. This is the standard I urge you to achieve when making your own examples.
Let’s look at another example from Paper 2:
This second example has a double outcome, in fact.
Teachers and students wishing to study the E-I-O method in more detail should visit...
- 100 Practical Examples in PE (Part 1)
- 100 Practical Examples in PE (Part 2)
- 100 Practical Examples in PE (Part 3)
Top Tip #5 Know Classification of skill and the Advantages and disadvantages of PEDs inside out
How can I put this without being accused of predicting your 2024 paper? I guess the only way I can say it is that, by some margin, Classification of skills and the Advantages and disadvantages of PEDs have been the most heavily examined topics between 2018 and 2023.
Therefore, only a fool would not have these topics absolutely nailed down in preparation for their exam in 2024.
Let’s take them in turn:
We know the following about classification of skills:
- It has been examined every year so far with substantial marks available on every paper.
- Most marks from this topic come from AO2 and AO3.
- Being able to justify the placement of different skills onto the classification continua is critical.
So, guess what? This topic and these skills are going to be a central feature of my revision sessions (see tip 10).
We know the following about advantages and disadvantages of PEDs:
- Like classification of skills, advantages and disadvantages of PEDs have featured on every paper between 2018 and 2023.
- Like classification of skills, plenty of AO3 marks can be acquired using the evaluate, suggest and discuss skills.
So, in summary, whilst there are no guarantees about what might appear on a 2024 exam paper, preparing for these three topics diligently and with the key skills in mind is a very good investment of your revision time.
With this in mind, I urge you to take part in The EverLearner's utterly free Paper 2 revision in May.
Top Tip #6 Use the The EverLearner's planning documents for your six and nine-mark answers
As you will probably already know, you will answer a six-mark and nine-mark extended writing piece in your AQA GCSE PE Paper 2 exam. Whilst it is true that four-markers carry more total raw marks, it’s really useful to become competent at answering these questions because it is the exact area where most students perform less well. Therefore, if you want to mark yourself out and get a better mark than others taking your paper, extended writing is an excellent way to do so:
As you can see from this image, most students fail to achieve most of the marks on six- and nine-mark questions and, if you manage to do so, you can really push ahead of the field.
In order to do that, I strongly recommend that you use my preparation documents. There are versions for both the six-mark writing and nine-mark writing and using these resources in preparation for your exam will serve you very well...
If you are a teacher and are wondering about the best use of these resources, you can watch a webinar on scaffolding synoptic writing for AQA GCSE PE students I broadcast a few weeks ago.
Top Tip #7 Choose your synoptic links ahead of time
Your nine-mark, extended writing answer requires you to make synoptic links from your answer to the question posed to other areas of content across the AQA GCSE PE course. I highly recommend that you have a series of synoptic links ready ahead of time and to support you with this, I have written this document:
I recommend making a minimum of two synoptic links in your nine-mark answer but, ideally, three. Some students make more. The document above will give you all the information you need to make these links within your answer.
Top Tip #8 Complete and mark the National Mock Exam
As I think you can probably tell, I think about how to perform well on AQA GCSE PE Paper 2 quite a lot. All of my thinking has been put into writing a highly relevant National Mock Exam paper which we published in January 2024. I urge you to download this paper and mark scheme and answer it, ideally under assessment conditions, before marking it using the mark scheme. You will find our AQA Paper 2 PE National Mock Exam in our AQA Revision Hub.
There is quite literally no better preparation for your exam that you can do.
Top Tip #9 Learn our model answers
The model answers for the National Mock Exam are available for everyone to download and read. I am going to make a very fundamental point about them here: LEARN THE MODEL ANSWERS. I mean, really now, please learn them. The model answers are hyper-relevant to your exam experience this summer and represent the ideal ways to answer all kinds of questions including the skills discussed in many of the points above. You will find my model answers for the AQA Paper 2 PE National Mock Exam in our AQA Revision Hub.
Please, please, please, learn those answers. You will not regret one second of doing so.
Top Tip #10 Watch our Paper 2 revision session
And finally… a very, very simple message: We broadcast our live revision show based on all the points made above on Tuesday 28th May (recording available on the hub page).
Folks, I cannot make this clearer: Watch it! Whilst I can’t promise you entertainment like Netflix or giggles like going out with your mates, I can guarantee you that this session is delivered with everything I am and will help you massively in your preparations for the exam itself. The revision is utterly free and comes with an entire notes pack, as well as the previously published infographics, mock exam, mark scheme and model answers. You can access the revision session here live on the day or on demand.
Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day.
