Rationale document

Centre number BD 109

Centre name Playpen School

Level and title of syllabus Cambridge International A Level Chemistry

Syllabus code 9701

Why you must complete the Rationale Document for each syllabus
The Rationale Document explains how you have determined school-assessed grades for your candidates in
the June 2021 series, by showing what evidence was chosen and how marks were awarded. The Rationale
Document outlines the steps in considering candidate evidence and determining school-assessed grades for
your candidates.
You must complete a Rationale Document for each syllabus. We will need to see the Rationale Document
when we select your centre for quality assurance checks of the school-assessed grades that you send to us.
Failure to complete and submit the Rationale Document correctly may result in delays to your candidates
receiving grades.

Who completes the Rationale Document for each syllabus

The Rationale Document should be completed by the Head of Department for each syllabus (or by the
teacher if there is no Head of Department), to explain to us how you have arrived at the school-assessed
grades for your candidates for the June 2021 exam series.

When you must submit the Rationale Document for each syllabus
We will email you, explaining which syllabuses from your centre have been chosen for quality assurance
checks. The email will explain how to upload the Rationale Document for these syllabuses and how to
upload the relevant candidate work.
You must complete a Rationale Document for each syllabus for which you are submitting entries and keep
them for your records. You only need to send us the Rationale Document for the syllabuses that we request.
Do not send the Rationale Document or candidate work to us if you have not been asked to do so.

What your completed Rationale Document must include

The Rationale Document must provide information about the areas below as relevant to the syllabus and
your centre.
A Selection of work
B Coverage of syllabus content and assessment objectives
C Security and authenticity of work
D Managing your marking (standardisation)
E Awarding grades to your students
F Access arrangements and special consideration

What happens after submitting the Rationale Document

We will use the Rationale Document and candidate evidence that you submit to check the school-assessed
grades that you have submitted. Once we have reviewed the evidence that you have submitted, we will
contact you by email if we require further information.

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Private candidates
If you have accepted entries for private candidates, please explain how their work has been obtained,
selected and authenticated, then go on to answer the rest of the questions in this Rationale Document.

Not Applicable

The following questions apply to all candidates, including private candidates.

A Selection of work
You must make sure that each candidate is aware of the evidence used to determine their grade in
advance of that grade being submitted to Cambridge. This transparency should enable candidates to
raise any errors or circumstances relating to particular pieces of evidence to be taken into account in
advance of submitting grades to us. You should take into account any statements they make in relation
to the evidence. Although you may share marks associated with individual pieces of evidence, you must
not share with students the grades submitted to us before results are released.
1. Please explain what pieces of work you have used for this syllabus and why you decided to include
these in the evidence.
If you have used different pieces of evidence for different candidates, explain how and why this has
been done.
We have used 3 pieces of evidence for all Chemisty students. Two mocks(Mock 1 & Mock 2), and an
Assignment work have been taken to assess the grades of the students. Both the mock exams were
taken based on CAIE past papers (2016-2019). We chose the method of assessing the students, as the
questions comply with the CAIE syllabus and the papers were made according to published CAIE mark
scheme.

An assignment was also taken which was based on topics from the syllabus.

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B Coverage of syllabus content and assessment objectives
We have said that evidence should cover as broad a range as possible of the assessment objectives and
syllabus content.
2. For each candidate’s portfolio for this syllabus, are all the major areas of syllabus content included?
Yes ✔ No
3. If you have answered No, please explain why the major area of syllabus content is not included.

4. For each candidate’s portfolio for this syllabus, are all the assessment objectives included?
Yes No ✔

5. If you have answered No, please explain why the assessment objectives were not included.

As the Covid Pandemic has been prevailing for more than 1 year now, we were unable to take sufficient
number of classes in online for Paper 5. So, we were bound to exempt Paper 5, which is also related
with Laboratory work. Paper 4, which is theory based, have been assessed for the syllabus, and
students got adequate support through online classes for that assessment.

6. Have you informed each candidate about the choice of evidence and considered their responses?
Yes ✔ No

C Security and authenticity of work

You must be able to confirm, with a reasonable degree of confidence, that the work included in every
portfolio is authentic, which means that it is the candidate’s own unaided work. A ‘reasonable degree of
confidence’ does not mean absolute certainty. However, it does mean that you have taken reasonable
steps to ensure that the work is authentic.
7. Please describe the conditions in which each type of piece of work was completed.
For example, was the work completed entirely in the classroom, was one piece of work completed as
homework, was one piece of work completed online?
Paper 4: This was completed at home by the students. The students gave the exam while being on a
zoom meeting with their cameras on. Their behaviour was stricly monitored during the exams to check
for any malpractice. The students were given a strict time limit (2 hours) to complete the paper, to
reduce the opportunities for further malpractice and they were asked to submit their answer scripts by
email straight after the exam time directly back to us. The hard copies were also sent to us within one
hour in the school premises. School-set assignment: This was completed remotely when school was
closed during lockdown. We made sure the questions were totally of Cambridge standard although we
have taken the questions from different text books.

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 8. How have you authenticated each type of piece of work?
Refer to guidance on authenticity in the Cambridge Handbook and on our website.
For example, have you conducted interviews with candidates, was the work done in a supervised way in
school? If the work was supervised, please give details.

For the remote exams, we used students' laptop cameras and monitored for malpractice remotely. We
also gave students tight time windows to complete the tests.
After each exam we collected soft copy immediately in my email, and students were also asked to
submit their hard copy individually by 1 hour in the school premise.

D Managing your marking (standardisation)

In cases where more than one teacher has used the same mark scheme, you are required to standardise
your marking.
9. Was more than one teacher involved in awarding marks to the candidates for this syllabus?
Yes ✔ No
10. If you have answered Yes, please describe the standardisation process that you used.
Include details of how you agreed the marks awarded, how you checked that you were all marking to the
same standard, how you ensured that all the subject teachers involved applied assessment criteria and
standards across the syllabus consistently.

For Paper-4, I divided the total papers equally among the teachers. After finishing the correction works,
the teachers swapped their set of papers and rechecked them. While doing so the teachers discussed
any differences in their way of marking the papers and we adjusted the marks where required.

11. How did you ensure that your judgements about each candidate’s level of performance were free
from bias?
It is important that the marking of work is objective; when marking, teachers should only take account of
the student’s knowledge, skills and abilities which are evident in the piece of work. Refer to our guidance
on avoiding bias.
When we marked Paper 4, we blanked out the students details on the front page. We marked each
paper question-by-question and used the mark scheme provided by Cambridge accurately and
objectively.

For the School-set assignement, We had a rephrase to use when reviewing the students' written
reports so that we could mark reliably and judge the quality of the work fairly. We recorded the online
examinations so that we could recheck the total online examination procedure to stop any kind of
malpractice.

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E Awarding grades to your students
Questions 12 and 13 are about how you awarded grades to your students. You don’t need to give details
of your workings for each candidate, but you do need to explain your approach.
12. Please explain how you determined the grades for each type of piece of work.
For example, you may have referred to published grade thresholds for a particular examination paper,
you may have used a percentage score, you may have used the published coursework thresholds for an
adapted piece of extended work, you may have considered the grades awarded to your students in
previous
exam series.
We maintain a particular standard while we made the questions, so that we have used a percentage
score for determining the grades, e.g,
30-39% - U
40-49% - E
50-59% -D
60-69% - C
70-79% - B
80-89% - A
90-100% A*

13. Please explain how you determined the overall grades for your candidates.

We have used 3 pieces of evidence for each student and preserved the proof of the corrected hard
copies of each student for those evidences. To achieve an ovarall particular grade each student had to
score the minimum mark of that grade in at least two assessments out of three.

F Access arrangements and special consideration

Questions 14 and 15 are about access arrangements. Refer to the Cambridge Handbook section 1.3 for
guidance about access arrangements.
14. Did any of your candidates require an access arrangement?
Yes No ✔

15. If you answered Yes, please give details of the access arrangements that were required, and how
these were delivered.

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 Questions 16 and 17 are about special consideration. Refer to the Cambridge Handbook section 5.5 for
guidance about special consideration.
16. Did any of your candidates require special consideration?
Yes No ✔

17. If you answered Yes, please give details.

Thank you for completing the Rationale Document.

You must complete a Rationale Document for each syllabus for which you are submitting entries and keep
them for your records. You only need to send us the Rationale Document for the syllabuses that we request.
Do not send the Rationale Document or candidate work to us if you have not been asked to do so.
I confirm that the information in this Rationale Document accurately represents how student-assessed
grades were determined.

Name G.M. Ali Kawsar

Position Subject Head (Chemistry)

Date 07.05.2021

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