Question Level Analysis and Performance Data

Our QLAPD (Question Level Analysis and Performance Data) document is a collection of data from every exam question from all series since 2017.

We currently publish them for Higher GCSE, Foundation GCSE, Level 2 Further Maths, Level 3 Mathematical Studies and A-level Maths.

We hear that teachers use them in a variety of ways, but they can be particularly useful for writing assessments. 

The National Facility data shows the percentage of marks that the cohort achieved on a particular question when it was live. This gives an indication as to how easy or difficult a question could be considered. This helps if you are trying to ramp a paper (most exam papers start off with easier questions and increase in difficulty).

Additionally, the Facility by Grade data can help you to select questions for a particular student group. These figures tell you the percentage of marks that students who gained a particular grade achieved when the question was live. 

For example, if you have a class of students who are currently working at a grade 3, but aiming for a grade 4, you might want to focus on questions that have a 70%+ facility for grade 4 but a lower facility for grade 3. 

This means that students who achieved a grade 4 did well on these questions, but students who achieved a grade 3 struggled with them. Although this is definitely not a definitive revision list, this should give a range of questions and topics that will help students to work towards achieving the higher grade.

You might prefer to select questions by topic, spec reference or assessment objective instead, for example if you are writing a topic test across grades. This can be done easily using the filters.

However you choose your questions, you can easily select them by changing the first column to ’yes’ and then clicking the purple button at the top of the screen. This then copies the questions onto the second page of the document.

This screen is similar to the first page, but it adds in the additional row that you can see here, where data relates to your selection as a whole. Here you can see that 20 marks of questions have been selected. At this point you can check the order of your questions, and that the range of topics and assessment objectives fit your plan.

You can then find these questions easily on Exampro (please contact us if you need more support with this step) and print out your test and mark scheme.

Once your students have completed the test and it has been marked, then the section that identifies ‘Mean Marks Achieved by Grade’ can give a good indicator of the grade your students are working at for that set of questions. 

Always remember that the facility represents performance at the end of the course by a specific, unique cohort, so these will not be perfect grade boundaries, but are certainly more reliable than figures selected at random.

If you would like a more bespoke demonstration of QLAPD, or have more questions, then please get in touch: maths@aqa.org.uk.

Try it now: AQA | All about maths | Search