Tuesday 4 September 2018

Past papers and exemplar answers

In this post, you will find all the available past paper questions that we currently have available to you. At the time of writing, the 2017 A-level Media specification is a very young course. there is a one year and a two year version of the course, called AS and A-level respectively. At this centre we teach the two year A-level. However, included here are examples of AS questions too, which should give you a good, if incomplete indication of the kind of thing that could come up at the end of your two years of study. We have also included centre mock questions, which are created by our Media team, but should be seen as 'unofficial'.

Please note the specification is modified every year or two, and therefore case studies may be slightly different from year to year. If in doubt, just ask your teacher.

We have also linked to a few exemplar answers from this post. These are essential resources in visualising what a high band response looks like.

If you have any questions about the A-level media exam, please talk to your teacher.


Past A-level papers 

These are either actual A-level papers or 'sample' papers published before the specification got going. These are naturally the most authentic examples you are going to find, but there's a lot less of them


Sample paper 2017

Sample paper Feb 2018

A-level June 2019


Exemplar responses to the June 2019 exam (C2)






Past AS level papers

AS media studies is a slightly different version of A-level media studies. It's only one year long and it covers half the content, for example only looking at one magazine, TV show, music video etc. So While these are totally authentic, you need to remember these will only give you a flavour of a full paper. If you're in any doubt, it might be best to skip these...




Past mock papers

These are centre mock papers. They take all sorts of different forms and styles, depending on when you take them. While these are excellent for practising content and for revision, do remember to pretty much ignore everything about their structure. 
















Revision questions


These are questions that are set in the six weeks of timetabled revision after all content has been taught. As a class, we go through them and work out everything you could possibly write... AND MORE. If anything, these questions are the most useful of all, because there's LOTS of them (41 in 2019 alone!!) and they actually tell you what to write. As a bonus, you will also find revision workshop sessions.


Revision questions 2019






Assorted exemplar answers


In addition to the exemplar answers that have been linked to above, you can find even more by clicking here