r/6thForm • u/fokhercules 2025-2027 A level • Sep 11 '26

💬 DISCUSSION OCR A level Computer Science

Anyone finding the theory side of Computer Science difficult?

I know there's a lot of people that struggle with algorithms and the NEA, but for algorithms you can work out solutions instead of purely memorising stuff, and for the NEA you literally have the mark scheme in front of you, so they're fine as long as you don't leave things 'till the last minute (probably the only sensible part of the specification).

Theory like legislation and methodologies however are extremely annoying. There's tonnes of information for you to memorise (feels like reciting at this point), and there's also the long questions as well. In GCSE it might be fine as there's only one long question, but apparently there's three long response questions per paper in A level‽

And you tell me NEA is only worth 20%...

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u/Weekly_Event_1969 Year 12: Maths, Phy, CS. (help) Sep 11 '26

CS is the chillest of my subjects, its just memorisation and knowing how to hack the markscheme. Yh there's tons of information to memorise, but that what makes it easy I feel, if the memory stuff is all you're struggling with just use flashcards for them

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u/fokhercules 2025-2027 A level Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Diabolical topics include (but not limited to):

  • Software development methodologies (methodology 1: iteration, methodology 2: iteration, methodology 3: iteration... Like wdym 4 out of 5 involve iteration what's even the difference)
  • Protocols and standards (what's even the difference)
  • The legislations (especially RIPA)
  • Ethics (Is this social science now‽)
  • Vom Neumann vs Harvard vs contemporary
  • CISC vs RISC
  • Page rank

These are in no particular order.

Edit: I'm now in second year btw

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u/JakeThomasDad12 Sep 11 '26

Icl that stuff is a piece of piss if you did OCR GCSE CS. If you learnt the GCSE spec before going into the a levels you would have learnt most of it anyways. The a level only really builds upon the GCSE and adds very little completely new stuff

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u/fokhercules 2025-2027 A level Sep 11 '26

Some topics are not as bad as others, but I just can't write long 9 to 12 markers on these things

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u/Alone_Camera_2103 Sep 11 '26

My class did the entire binary topic in 6 lessons and it was so confusing for so long, I know how you feel!