GCSE Media Studies past papers, marked against the real criteria

Media Studies papers with the marking criteria beside every question, across media language, representation, industries and audiences. You write the answer in full; it is placed in a level the way an examiner places it, with the reason it sits there and what would lift it.

Open the papers, free, no card

What "marked against the criteria" actually means

Very little on a Media Studies paper is marked by ticking facts off a list. The longer questions are marked by level: the examiner reads the whole answer and decides which band description it fits. The line to the band above runs between saying what is in a media product and saying how that product makes its meaning, so an answer can be accurate about everything on the page and still sit in the bottom half of the marks.

The source below is invented, like the sources in these papers: real posters, covers and advertisements are in copyright, so the papers describe original products in the same formats.

The habit that costs the marks has a shape: identify the audience, then guess at them. "Young people like X" is a claim about teenagers, not about the poster, and it can be written without looking at the source — which is exactly why it cannot be credited for analysing one.

The framework, and why a question names the part it wants

Media Studies is examined through four areas, and a question almost always names the one it wants. Media language is how meaning is built: framing, lighting, colour, typography, layout, editing, sound, the conventions of the form. Representation is who and what is shown, how, and what is left out. Media industries is who made it, who owns them, how it was funded, distributed and regulated. Audiences is who it is for, how they are reached, and how differently people respond to one product.

A large share of lost marks is answering with the wrong one: a representation question answered with camera angles, an industry question answered with what viewers enjoy. The command word narrows it again — explain wants a reason attached, analyse wants the device and its effect, evaluate wants an argued judgement with the other side acknowledged.

At GCSE there is no compulsory list of theorists to recite, as there is at A Level, and the marks come from applying an idea rather than defining it. Todorov's account of narrative moving from equilibrium through disruption to a new equilibrium is worth nothing as a definition, and worth something the moment you say the countdown puts the invented poster at the disruption and sells the drama on it. Blumler and Katz's uses and gratifications — people choosing media for information, company, a sense of who they are, escape — is what the audience question above was really asking. Stuart Hall's reader, who takes the reading a product invites, negotiates with it, or reads against it, is why one viewer finds an advertisement aspirational and another finds it insulting.

The set products, and the questions that assume you studied them

Part of the course is built on products the board chooses: a magazine, a newspaper front page, a television episode, a music video, a video game, an advertisement. AQA and Eduqas set different lists and update them, so the products your class studied are the ones your paper asks about.

That splits the exam into two jobs. Unseen questions test whether you can work on something you have never met, which improves with repetition. Set product questions expect detail you cannot invent under pressure: when it was made and what was going on then, who owns the company behind it, how it was funded, distributed and received. The papers here work on unseen sources, because the set products are somebody's copyrighted work — but the marking transfers, since the difference between describing and analysing does not change with the product.

The production is a share of the grade, and we do not mark it

Say this plainly, because it decides what a site like this one is for. A substantial share of the qualification — around thirty per cent on the specifications in common use, though check your own — is non-exam assessment: a media production made to a brief the board sets, usually with a statement of intent. Your teacher marks it and the board moderates it. We do not see it, do not mark it, and would not make any part of it, because a production that is not yours cannot be submitted.

What we do is the written papers: unseen analysis, the representation comparison, the industry and audience questions, marked with the reason each mark was or was not given. The production is assessed against the same framework, so the vocabulary carries over. The making does not.

The papers

30 questions across 5 papers, each with its own criteria. Everything here is written in the boards' own format and judged against their published criteria; the papers themselves belong to the boards and are not reproduced here.

Try it on your own answer

Open a paper, write what you would have written in the exam, including the wrong bits, and read what comes back. It is free to start and does not ask for a card.

Open GCSE Media Studies

The other subjects

Twenty-three in one place, aligned to AQA, Edexcel and OCR.