What are Assessment Objectives in A Level Politics?

Assessment Objectives Outline

In A Level Politics, achieving high marks requires understanding the Assessment Objectives (AOs) that dictate how your work is marked by examiners. Understanding the three AOs (AO1, AO2, and AO3) will help you understand how to get higher marks in your essays where to improve from draft to draft.

This blog post will go through the three assessment objectives and how you can achieve them. We will also outline how Study Politics provides resources to show how the assessment objectives can be applied to your essays with practical advice and demosntrations.

AO1: Knowledge

The first of the A Level Politics assessment objectives, AO1, focuses on your knowledge and understanding of political concepts, theories, and structures. AO1 is about demonstrating factual knowledge and foundational understanding that will underpin your arguments. For Edexcel, this makes up 33% of 30-mark essays. For AQA, it makes up 20% of 25-mark essays.

But how do you practically achieve high AO1 marks?

• Master Key Content: start by ensuring you know the course content thoroughly, including key terms, political systems, important thinkers, and case studies.
• Use Relevant Examples: When writing, provide evidence for your claims. For example, if discussing voting behaviour, use a case study of a general election to exemplify how a specific factor influenced voting behaviour.
• Demonstrate understanding: AO1 goes beyond stating specific facts. You need to show actual understanding of concepts by explaining why they are important or what they could lead to.

By setting a firm foundation of knowledge, you can then begin to build on this by adding analysis and evaluation, which we will explore in the next two assessment objectives.

AO2: Analysis

The next of our assessment objectives, AO2, is where you take your knowledge and understanding demonstrated in AO1 and take a deeper dive, analysing and comparing concepts, ideologies, or events. This objective requires you to go beyond simple description, showing you can interpret and connect political ideas in a thoughtful way. The best way to do this is through explanation of why the knowledge matters in the context of the political system.

What does this look like?

• Develop Arguments: Use your factual knowledge as a starting point, then explore the implications or significance of what you’ve presented. For example, if comparing an elected vs unelected House of Lords, discuss the potential impacts of elections on the type of members or the use of the House of Commons.
• Use Comparative Language: Phrases like “in contrast,” “similarly,” or “on the other hand” help the examiner see that you’re actively comparing and contrasting ideas.
• Highlight Significance: Don’t just present facts; explain why these facts matter. An insightful analysis will show the reader how the details you’ve included relate to broader political themes, debates, or questions.

This sets you in good stead to complete the third of the assessment objectives, as you have set out thorough knowledge and explained them well.

AO3: Evaluation

The final piece of the jigsaw, AO3, has historically been the most challenge of the assessment objectives for A Level Politics students to achieve, but it is simple to master. AO3 is about making judgments and drawing conclusions. Having considered all sides of the debate, this is where you come to your conclusion and state which side you are on.

How to meet AO3:

• Assess Perspectives: Show you can weigh arguments from multiple angles. For instance, if discuss whether to reduce the voting age to 16, talk about the positives and negatives.
• Stay Objective: To avoid biased judgments, aim for a balanced approach. Acknowledge the strengths of opposing views, even if you disagree with them, to show that your evaluation is well-rounded.
• Make a Clear Judgment: Conclude your essay with a decisive statement that reflects your reasoned evaluation. Use the knowledge you’ve discussed to be clear. Do NOT sit on the fence in your evaluation.

Conclusion: using the assessment objectives

Ensuring that you focus your essay on all three assessment objectives will result in higher marks for your essays. Focussing on the assessment objectives means that you are writing essays that show a potential examiner that you have excellent knowledge, analytical skills and can form a conclusion on the basis of what you have written.

Now that you’ve seen how the assessment objectives are distributed, Study Politics is here to help you reach the next step. Our exam guidance course goes deeper into examples of how the AOs can be applied, through easy tips and tricks. You can also get access to our range of model essays to see how the AOs are applied in A* essays. Finally, you can bring this all together with our practice papers to put what you’ve learned into practice.