Qualification
Accredited
Oxford Cambridge and RSA
A LEVEL
Examiners’ report
COMPUTER
SCIENCE
H446
For first teaching in 2015
H446/01 Summer 2022 series
Version 1 ocr.org.uk/computerscience
A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Contents
Introduction ..............................................................................................................................................4
Paper 1 series overview ...........................................................................................................................5
Question 1 (a) (i) ...................................................................................................................................6
Question 1 (a) (ii) ..................................................................................................................................6
Question 1 (b) ......................................................................................................................................7
Question 1 (c) (i) ...................................................................................................................................8
Question 1 (c) (ii) ..................................................................................................................................9
Question 1 (c) (iii)..................................................................................................................................9
Question 1 (c) (iv) ...............................................................................................................................10
Question 1 (d) (i) .................................................................................................................................11
Question 1 (d) (ii) ................................................................................................................................11
Question 1 (d) (iii) ...............................................................................................................................12
Question 1 (e)* ...................................................................................................................................12
Question 2 (a) (ii) ................................................................................................................................13
Question 2 (b) .....................................................................................................................................13
Question 2 (c) (i) .................................................................................................................................14
Question 2 (c) (ii) ................................................................................................................................15
Question 2 (d) (i) .................................................................................................................................15
Question 2 (d) (ii) ................................................................................................................................15
Question 2 (d) (iii) ...............................................................................................................................16
Question 2 (d) (iv) ...............................................................................................................................16
Question 2 (e) .....................................................................................................................................17
Question 2 (f) ......................................................................................................................................17
Question 2 (g) (i) .................................................................................................................................18
Question 2 (g) (ii) ................................................................................................................................19
Question 3 (a) (iii) ...............................................................................................................................20
Question 3 (b) ....................................................................................................................................21
Question 3 (c) ....................................................................................................................................21
Question 4* .........................................................................................................................................22
Question 5 (b) (i) .................................................................................................................................22
Question 5 (b) (ii) ................................................................................................................................23
Question 5 (d) ....................................................................................................................................23
Question 5 (e) (iii) ...............................................................................................................................24
Question 5 (f)* ....................................................................................................................................24
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 6 (a) (i) .................................................................................................................................25
Question 6 (b) (i) .................................................................................................................................26
Question 6 (b) (ii) ................................................................................................................................26
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Introduction
Our examiners’ reports are produced to offer constructive feedback on candidates’ performance in the
examinations. They provide useful guidance for future candidates.
The reports will include a general commentary on candidates’ performance, identify technical aspects
examined in the questions and highlight good performance and where performance could be improved.
A selection of candidate answers are also provided. The reports will also explain aspects which caused
difficulty and why the difficulties arose, whether through a lack of knowledge, poor examination
technique, or any other identifiable and explainable reason.
Where overall performance on a question/question part was considered good, with no particular areas to
highlight, these questions have not been included in the report.
A full copy of the question paper and the mark scheme can be downloaded from OCR.
Advance Information for Summer 2022 assessments
To support student revision, advance information was published about the focus of exams for Summer
2022 assessments. Advance information was available for most GCSE, AS and A Level subjects, Core
Maths, FSMQ, and Cambridge Nationals Information Technologies. You can find more information on
our website.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Paper 1 series overview
H446/01 (Computer Systems) is one of two examined components for the GCE A Level Computer
Science.
This component focuses on:
• The characteristics of contemporary processors, input, output and storage devices
• Software and software development
• Exchanging data
• Data types, data structures and algorithms
• Legal, moral, cultural and ethical issues
To do well on this paper, candidates need to be able to demonstrate and apply knowledge across all the
topics listed above, in different contexts.
It is important that candidates apply their knowledge to the question where a scenario or data is
provided. Extra information was provided for this series, but candidates were still expected to have
covered the whole specification. Definitions were at times not clearly expressed and key terms not used.
Centres should take note of the SQL that candidates are expected to have awareness of.
Candidates who did well on this paper Candidates who did less well on this paper
generally did the following: generally did the following:
• Applied their knowledge to the context • Gave unclear definitions
• Were able to write pseudocode or program • Attempted to answer questions with a mix of
code pseudocode and program code
• Were able to address all parts of the question • Only addressed a part of an extended answer
in their extended answer responses question
• Were able to explain the principles of ACID
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 1 (a) (i)
Many candidates were able to access full marks on this question. This question has been asked in
previous papers and candidates should be encouraged to use these to make sure they are clear in their
responses. There were many possible responses in the mark scheme to help candidates to gain full
marks. Most candidates gained at least 1 mark.
Question 1 (a) (ii)
This question was generally answered well by candidates and the majority gave separate areas of
memory for data and instructions. Where candidates were not given marks, it was generally because
their answer was unclear, e.g. just saying ‘separate memory’.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 1 (b)
Most candidates were able to gain full marks on this question. Less successful responses often
mentioned clock speed, cache or cores without referring to an improvement, e.g. higher or faster.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 1 (c) (i)
This was generally well answered by candidates who had a good understanding of LMC. Candidates
should be encouraged to trace through LMC programs with different values as well as writing them.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 1 (c) (ii)
This was generally answered well, and the majority of students were able to gain marks with most
gaining 3 or 4 marks. Less successful responses over complicated the program leading to them making
mistakes. A small number of candidates attempted to answer in pseudocode rather than LMC.
Candidates should be encouraged to use the commands in Appendix 5d of the specification.
Question 1 (c) (iii)
Many candidates were able to gain at least 2 marks on this question. Some candidates were not
awarded marks as they wrote about multiple cores or programs being fetched instead, of instructions.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Exemplar 1
The candidate has clearly described pipelining with correct terminology. They gained full marks for the
description of one instruction being decoded while another is fetched and another is executed, as well as
describing that it allows multiple instructions to be processed at the same time.
Question 1 (c) (iv)
Many candidates gained 1 mark for giving a benefit to the charity, but they did not go on to say why
pipelining enabled that. Some candidates did not apply their answer to the charity, so were not awarded
the mark for the benefit.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 1 (d) (i)
Most candidates were able to access 1 mark for the result of ALU calculations, but few were able to give
two uses. Some confused the accumulator with the program counter and the ALU.
Question 1 (d) (ii)
This question was generally well answered by candidates who gave clear responses.
Misconception
Some candidates thought that the program counter kept track of a count of the number of
instructions that had been fetched.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 1 (d) (iii)
Most candidates gained full marks on this question and were able to correctly identify three other
registers. Some lost marks for saying the ALU or control unit were registers.
Question 1 (e)*
Many candidates were able to discuss the difference in reduced or complex instruction sets and gave
some discussion of the increase in hardware requirements for CISC. Few talked about the software
differences, and some assumed the charity would need to be programming the devices which was not
relevant to the question.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 2 (a) (ii)
Many candidates gained 1 mark for the foreign key and most gained both marks, although some
candidates gave ‘package’ as the table where it is a primary key rather than the membership table where
it is the foreign key.
Question 2 (b)
Many candidates were able to gain some marks. The question refers to the Adverts field which is in the
package table and states that the data shown in the tables is only an extract from the tables. For full
marks on this question, candidates were expected to attempt to join the two tables to access the
Username and Firstname from the membership table, and the Adverts from the package table.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 2 (c) (i)
Few candidates were able to gain full marks on this question as many overcomplicated it or could not
give a relevant data capture method. When they did give form as a relevant answer, they often had
unclear suitability.
Exemplar 2
The candidate has given a valid method and has given clear and correct suitability by describing that the
details could be automatically added to the database and can be filled in from home, which would be a
remote location. The candidate gained the full 3 marks.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 2 (c) (ii)
Few candidates gained full marks on this question although there were a range of relevant responses
they could have given.
Question 2 (d) (i)
Question 2 (d) (ii)
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 2 (d) (iii)
For candidates with a good understanding of ACID, these questions were well answered. Unfortunately,
some had only a vague knowledge or confused it with referential integrity. Some answers were unclear.
Some candidates talked about locking the entire database when record locking rather than just the
relevant records.
Question 2 (d) (iv)
Many candidates were given a mark for deadlock or longer wait times. Those candidates given a mark in
Question 2 (d) (iv) tended to be those who has gained marks in Question 2 (d) (iii).
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 2 (e)
Most candidates were able to gain 1 mark for this question, but few went on to gain a second mark.
Question 2 (f)
Candidates tended to write at length for this question, but often made the same point twice. Many
missed marks for not making the comparison between lossy and lossless and only gave one side. Some
candidates discussed the videos being downloaded rather than streamed.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 2 (g) (i)
This question was well answered by some candidates. The question asks for pseudocode or program
code and candidates should be encouraged to do one or the other if given a choice, rather than a
combination of the two. Many candidates did not use the information in the question stem to help them
structure their answer and gave more than one parameter in the constructor.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Exemplar 3
This was a good clear example of an answer given in pseudocode. The candidate has declared the 3
given attributes as private, shown a constructor with one parameter and set name to the parameter and
views and rating to 0 and 3. The candidate gained 7 marks.
Question 2 (g) (ii)
Most candidates were able to gain at least 1 mark for this question. Those who were not given marks
used pseudocode but did not state that the procedure was public, or they did not use the same attribute
they had declared in Question 2 (g) (i).
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 3 (a) (iii)
Most candidates were able to gain some marks, with many gaining full marks. A popular method was to
do two’s complement addition. Candidates should be encouraged to show their working in binary and not
do the subtraction in denary and then just give the answer in binary. The question asks them to complete
a binary subtraction.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 3 (b)
Most candidates correctly identified the exponent and that the point needed to be moved to the left. Any
valid method of working was given marks here, where candidates got the correct answer.
Question 3 (c)
This question was mostly well answered. However, some candidates were able to identify 01 as being
normalised but not 10 being normalised.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 4*
There were a wide range of responses to this question and a wide range of marks given. The most
successful responses were able to address all parts of the question and could give the meaning of AI as
well as some relevant examples of AI bias. They were also able to give at least one measure that could
be taken. Many candidates used self-driving cars as their only example and should be encouraged to
explore the use of AI in different fields. Some confused the AI being biased with people being biased
against AI. Many candidates were unable to give relevant measures for preventing bias. Candidates
should be encouraged to make sure they include all points the question asked for, in their answer.
Question 5 (b) (i)
This question was generally well answered, though some candidates thought that a translator translated
machine code into source code or that it translated code into something the computer could understand,
without specifying what that was.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 5 (b) (ii)
This question was well answered by many candidates who showed two distinct differences.
Question 5 (d)
Many candidates gave good descriptions of how code is optimised, but they did not answer the question
which asked what the purpose of optimisation is.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 5 (e) (iii)
Candidates should be encouraged to give a complete answer. Just saying ‘Unicode uses more bits than
ASCII’ is not enough to be given a mark at this level.
Question 5 (f)*
Most candidates gained some marks on this question. Most could explain that spiral was iterative and
waterfall was done in linear stages, but many did not expand on this. Few candidates linked their answer
to the complex computer program mentioned in the question. Some candidates also described waterfall
as iterative.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 6 (a) (i)
This question was generally well answered with many candidates gaining at least 1 mark. The question
asked why the OS used ‘first come first served’ and many candidates were not given marks for stating
why the user would want the OS to use it. Some candidates talked about other scheduling algorithms
even though this was not relevant to the question.
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A Level Computer Science - H446/01 - Summer 2022 Examiners’ report
Question 6 (b) (i)
Very few students could explain what happens at the application layer and answers tended to be about
splitting data into packets. Some candidates did mention that encryption would take place but didn’t go
on to mention decryption when receiving data. Those candidates that identified that protocols are applied
here were unable to give a specific example and simply listed protocols they knew, but without context.
Question 6 (b) (ii)
Very few candidates were able to gain 2 marks on this question. Some candidates talked about
transmitting data via cables, despite wireless being mentioned in the question.
26 © OCR 2022
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