GCSE PE past papers, marked against the real criteria

AQA, Edexcel and OCR PE papers with the mark scheme sitting beside every question. You write the answer in full; it is marked the way an examiner marks it, mark by mark, including the mechanism marks that a true, sensible sentence about getting fitter never earns. The written papers only: the practical performance is not ours to mark, and we say so plainly further down.

Open the papers, free, no card

What "marked against the criteria" actually means

PE reads like a subject you can answer in ordinary English, and that is the trap. The scheme wants the named structure, the named process and the step between the training and the performance. An answer can be entirely true and still miss every mark past the first.

The shape repeats down the paper. Training does not "give you more oxygen", it increases capillarisation and the number and size of the mitochondria. Resting heart rate does not simply "go down", it falls because a larger stroke volume delivers the same cardiac output in fewer beats. Each of those middles is a mark somebody did not get.

Naming it exactly: the muscle, the bone, the plane

The applied anatomy and movement analysis questions are marked on the noun. "Leg muscle" is not gastrocnemius, "arm bone" is not humerus, and an antagonistic pair named the wrong way round scores nothing even though both muscles are correct.

Take the upward phase of a biceps curl. The movement is flexion at the elbow, a hinge joint formed by the humerus, radius and ulna. The biceps brachii is the agonist; the triceps brachii is the antagonist, relaxing and lengthening while it happens. It occurs in the sagittal plane about the transverse axis, and it is a third-class lever, because the effort sits between the fulcrum and the load. Now take the calf raise: plantar flexion at the ankle, gastrocnemius as the agonist along with soleus, tibialis anterior as the antagonist, still the sagittal plane and still the transverse axis — but a second-class lever, because here the load is the part in the middle. The two read almost alike and are marked differently.

The plane and the axis come in fixed pairs, so getting the plane wrong usually costs the axis mark with it: sagittal with transverse, frontal with sagittal, transverse with longitudinal. Lifting the arms out sideways in a star jump is abduction at the shoulder, frontal plane, sagittal axis. A full twist on a trampoline is the transverse plane about the longitudinal axis.

The marks are for the sport named in the question

Almost every written question on a PE paper puts a performer in front of you: a 400 m runner, a hockey defender, a beginner learning a seat drop. The performer is not scenery. On a question asking you to analyse training for that 400 m runner, an accurate account of what interval training is takes the method marks and none of the rest; what is left is the reason it suits this event, which is largely anaerobic, so the work and recovery periods can be set to build tolerance of lactic acid at race pace.

The extended questions — six or nine marks depending on the board and the paper — are banded on the whole answer rather than ticked point by point, and the top band wants a judgement with the reasoning pointing at it. "It depends on the athlete" is true and scores nothing, because the athlete is in the question. The short "give a sporting example" items work the same way: the example has to demonstrate the function you named, so the cranium protecting the brain in a rugby tackle earns it and "footballers need bones" does not.

The written papers are about 60% of the grade

This matters more in PE than in any subject we cover, so here it is flatly. On AQA, Edexcel and OCR alike, roughly 60% of the GCSE is the written exams and roughly 40% is non-exam assessment: practical performance in three activities, plus a written analysis of performance coursework.

We work on the written papers. We do not mark a practical performance and could not; that is assessed by your teacher and moderated by the board, from watching you play. Nor do we write or mark the coursework, which is your own work under your school's supervision and has to stay that way. The theory it draws on — the components of fitness, the training methods and principles, the fitness tests and what their data shows — is here, but the piece itself is yours.

Which cuts both ways. A pupil who is strong on the field is already carrying a large part of the grade and is usually losing marks only on the paper. That part is learnable, and it is the part these papers are for.

The papers

42 questions across 7 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 PE

The other subjects

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