A Level | Computer Science – Leighton Park

Exam Board

OCR

Will the Course Suit Me?

The Computer Science qualifications are aimed at students who value computational thinking, helping students to develop the skills to solve problems, design systems and understand the power and limits of human and machine intelligence. Students will be required to utilise high level of Mathematics, analytical thinking, organisational and time management skills.

Course Description

The A Level comprises of three components over two academic years. An overview of the components is as follows.

Component 1: Computer Systems

• Characteristics of contemporary processors, input, output, and storage devices – structure and function of the processor; types of processor; input, output, and storage
• Software and software development – systems software; applications generation; software development; types of programming language
• Exchanging data – compression, hashing, encryption; databases; networks; web technologies
• Data types, data structures, and algorithms – data types, data structures, and Boolean Algebra
• Legal, moral, cultural, and ethical issues – consideration of legislation, artificial intelligence, environmental effects, and censorship of the Internet among other topical issues.

Component 2: Algorithms and Programming

• Elements of computational thinking – understand what is meant by
• thinking abstractly, ahead, procedurally, logically, and concurrently
• Problem solving and programming – focusing on programming techniques and constructs, and computational methods
• Algorithms – consideration of analysing and designing algorithms, methods of determining the efficiency of different algorithms, and learning standard algorithms such as sorting, searching, and shortest path algorithms.

Component 3: Programming Project

• The project involves a user-driven problem of an appropriate size and complexity to solve. Students will need to analyse the problem, design a solution, implement the solution and give a thorough evaluation.

Benefits of the Course

The course is relevant to the modern and changing world of Computing, and they will also be relevant to Higher Education courses in Computer Science, Maths, and Physics in particular, while providing. a good grounding for other subject areas that require computational thinking and analytical skills.

Outside the Classroom

Students will be invited to a range of enrichment opportunities with leading global IT and Computer Science organisations.

How is this Qualification Assessed?

If you have any queries about the course, please contact Head of Department: David Owen

To apply for our Sixth Form, please see the Admissions page.