Sit a full paper. Mark it honestly.
Original full length papers written to match the real format exactly, each with a built in timer, a complete mark scheme and a model answer for every question. Doing one properly teaches you more in ninety minutes than a week of rereading notes.
GCSE and A Level papers
Each one is timed to the same marks per minute as the real assessment, so the pressure is genuine.
GCSE Computer Science Paper 1: Computer Systems
A full length original paper covering systems architecture, memory and storage, networks, network security, systems software and the impacts of technology.
GCSE Computer Science Paper 2: Computational Thinking, Algorithms and Programming
A full length original paper covering computational thinking, algorithms, searching and sorting, programming fundamentals, robust programs, Boolean logic and IDEs.
A Level Computer Science Paper 1: Computer Systems
An original paper in the style of H446/01, covering processors, software and development, exchanging data, data types and structures, and legal and ethical issues.
A Level Computer Science Paper 2: Algorithms and Programming
An original paper in the style of H446/02, covering computational thinking, programming techniques, computational methods and algorithms including complexity and pathfinding.
Creative iMedia R093: Creative iMedia in the Media Industry
An original paper in the style of the R093 examined unit, covering the media industry, factors influencing product design, pre-production planning and distribution.
OCR Data Analytics, the two exam units
Three papers for each externally assessed unit. F200 allows 1 hour 15 minutes for 60 marks and F201 1 hour 30 minutes for 60, and these are timed to match. Several questions print resource material, a chart, an extract or a results table, exactly as the real papers do.
Data Analytics F200 Paper A: Fundamentals of Data Analytics
A full length original paper sampling all five topic areas of F200: understanding data, managing data, platforms and access, the law, and the roles. Built around a veterinary group merging its practices onto one system.
Data Analytics F200 Paper B: Fundamentals of Data Analytics
A second full length F200 paper, built around a city council bringing together data from its waste, housing and leisure services to plan where to invest.
Data Analytics F200 Paper C: Fundamentals of Data Analytics
A third full length F200 paper, set in a manufacturer running production line sensors alongside its order and maintenance systems.
Data Analytics F201 Paper A: Big Data and Machine Learning
A full length original paper sampling all five topic areas of F201, built around a logistics company instrumenting its fleet and warehouses with sensors.
Data Analytics F201 Paper B: Big Data and Machine Learning
A second full length F201 paper, set in an NHS trust considering a model that predicts which patients are at risk of readmission.
Data Analytics F201 Paper C: Big Data and Machine Learning
A third full length F201 paper, set around a streaming platform that recommends content, predicts which subscribers will cancel, and reports on its own energy use.
Key Stage 3 end of unit assessments
Two assessment points a year across Years 7, 8 and 9, written in the same style as a GCSE paper so that the format is completely familiar long before it counts.
Year 7 Computing: Autumn Assessment
Your first assessment in computing. It covers using computers, hardware and software, files and folders, staying safe on the school network, and programming in Scratch.
Year 7 Computing: Summer Assessment
The whole of Year 7, with most of the marks on the units taught after Christmas: Python, what is inside the computer, binary, and vector graphics.
Year 8 Computing: Autumn Assessment
Digital literacy and online safety, and computational thinking: decomposition, abstraction, flowcharts, pseudocode, trace tables and test data.
Year 8 Computing: Summer Assessment
The whole of Year 8, with most of the marks on Python, spreadsheets, networks and cyber security, and web development.
Year 9 Computing: Autumn Assessment
Covers the law and your data, binary and hexadecimal, binary addition, units of storage, and how text, images and sound are represented. This is the first assessment that looks and feels like a GCSE paper.
Year 9 Computing: Summer Assessment
The last assessment before GCSE. It covers the whole of Year 9: data representation, Python programming, app design, artificial intelligence and 3D modelling, and it is written in GCSE style throughout.
Why these are original papers
Real past papers belong to the exam boards and are protected by copyright, so they cannot lawfully be republished on this site. Every paper here is instead written from scratch to match the real thing on the measures that matter: the structure, the balance of topics, the command words, the mark allocations and the timing. Each comes with a full mark scheme written in the same style as a real one, plus a model answer, so you can mark your own work properly.
Use these alongside the official past papers, not instead of them. The official papers are free to download from each board's own website.
Official past papers
Download the genuine past papers and mark schemes directly from the exam board:
- OCR GCSE Computer Science J277 past papers
- OCR A Level Computer Science H446 past papers
- OCR Cambridge National Creative iMedia J834 assessment materials
These links go to the exam board's own website and open in a new tab. Some materials, particularly recent Cambridge National papers, are held on the board's secure teacher portal and your teacher will be able to access them for you.
How to get the most out of a paper
Most students do papers badly, and then wonder why doing lots of them did not help.
Do it in one sitting, timed, with no notes
Stopping to look something up turns an exam into an open book exercise. If you cannot answer it, leave a gap and move on, exactly as you would in May.
Mark it against the mark scheme, not against your feelings
Award a mark only where you actually made the point. Being generous to yourself now costs you real marks later.
Write down every mark you dropped and why
Not the question, the reason. Did you not know it, misread the command word, run out of time, or know it but fail to say it clearly? Each of those needs a different fix.
Revise from that list, not from the specification
Your dropped marks are your revision plan. Going back to page one and reading everything again is comfortable and almost useless.
Redo the questions you got wrong, a week later
Not the whole paper. Just those questions, from memory. If you can now answer them fully, the gap is genuinely closed.