Assessment Objective [AO]

An assessment objective (usually referred to by its initialism “AO”) is a skill that examiners will assess you for in your exams. This is based on the skills that you need to be able to do if you want to do well in that particular subject. Each subject comes with its own set of assessment objectives. You can find an exam’s AOs on its website or in the exam specification.

In a UK exam, each question tests you for at least one of the subject’s AOs. This helps the examiner to see how well you are carrying out the skills that you need to for that subject.

For essay-based subjects like English and history, there will often be more than one assessment objective associated with each question. In that case, each AO will get a designated number of marks that the examiner can give you.

This will usually depend on what the exam board prioritises. If they don’t care much about spelling in an exam question, they’ll make the mark for the SPaG AO much lower. On the other hand, if the analysis AO is really important, that will carry more marks.

That means that there is a limit to how far a single skill can take you. If you want to get top marks in a question, you have to do well in all of its AOs. You can’t just rely on the ones you’re good at!

There are usually no more than five assessment objectives per subject.

Who Sets the Assessment Objectives?

Although you can find the AOs on an exam board’s website, they aren’t the ones who decide on them. It’s actually the government that has control over which skills they want to test you on. It is decided through The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual).

You can find a list of assessment objectives for all available GCSE and A-level subjects on the government website.

Once Ofqual sets the AOs, they send them over to the exam boards. It is then up to the exam boards how they choose to assess you on those skills. However, they still need to ensure they have the government’s approval!

That’s why all the exam boards are so similar in their content. They’re using the same AOs and getting approval from the same government. It’s only the “packaging” of these skills that are different!

That makes your life easier, though. It means that you can pick up a textbook from any exam board and learn important information – even if it’s not the board you’re studying! As long as you’re not using it to learn the exam structure, you’ll benefit.