GCSE PE for OCR

About your course

There are three ways in which you can study for a GCSE in PE with the OCR exam board:

• GCSE in Physical Education

• GCSE in Physical Education (Games)

• GCSE (short course) in Physical Education (Games).

If you are doing the short course you will not have to know about all the information in this book. All three of the OCR GCSE PE courses involve both coursework and preparation for a written paper. For your coursework, you will choose four different types of activities (two if you are doing the short course). Over your course, you will work on how well you can do these activities, and at the end of the course you will be assessed on your performance in each of your activities. You will also carry out an ‘analysis of performance’ task for one of your activities, which involves trying to improve either your own or someone else’s performance through designing a Personal Exercise Programme (PEP). Depending on what your school offers, if you are doing the GCSE in Physical Education, you can choose from the following list of activity areas (each area contains lots of different types of activity, which your teacher

can tell you about):

• Games activities

• Gymnastic activities

• Dance activities

• Athletics activities

• Outdoor adventurous activities

• Swimming activities

• Exercise activities.

Your four activities need to come from at least two of these different activity areas (e.g. football and cricket from Games, crosscountry running and track and field athletics from Athletics). If you choose an activity from the Exercise activities area, you have to then choose your other three activities from at least two other activity areas. If you live in Northern Ireland , your four activities need to come from three activity areas. If you are studying PE (Games) or the Games short course GCSE, you have three activity areas to choose from:

• Invasion games

• Net/wall games

• Striking/fielding/target games.

Again, your four activities, or two in the case of those of you who are following g the short course, need to come from at least two different Games activity areas.

Section 1

Factors affecting participation and performance

  • The skeleton and joints
  • Muscles
  • The circulatory and respiratory systems
  • Skill
  • Motivation and mental preparation
  • Social reasons for participation
  • School
  • Social background
  • Local and national facilities

Section 2

The relationship between health, fitness and physical activity

  • Components of fitness
  • Factors affecting fitness
  • Investigation of the effect of fitness on performance and how to assess it
  • Fitness training principles
  • Training methods
  • Training effects

Section 3

Risk assessment in physical activity

  • Potential hazards
  • Prevention of injury
  • Injury treatment

Section 4

Coursework

  • Performance
  • Applied conditions
  • Analysis of performance

To view GCSE PE Assessment Criteria click here.