AS and A-level Psychology: changes to specification for first teaching in September 2025
Find out more about the changes we've made to better support your teaching and learning.
Published
Tuesday 22 Oct 2024
We’re delighted to announce that we’ve made changes to the subject content of our AS and A-level Psychology specification (7181, 7182) ready for first teaching in September 2025.
The changes will affect first AS exams in summer 2026 and A-level exams in summer 2027.
What’s changed?
You can be assured that the changes we’ve made keep the specification content that you and your learners enjoy. We’ve not introduced any new topics, nor have we made changes to the optionality offered on Paper 3. However, we’ve made some changes that improve the clarity of the specification, as well as reducing some of the specification content.
It matters to us that we make the right changes. To help us to do this we’ve listened to teachers, consulted with external experts in the wider Psychology community and universities, and worked with our senior examiners to inform the decisions we’ve made.
Summary of changes
We’ve updated elements of the AS and A-level Psychology specification to bring these more up-to-date and to better support teaching and learning.
To help you see how the subject content changes will look from first teaching in September 2025, we’ve created a full list of the summary of changes for the AS and A-level specification.
Only changes to the subject content are listed in the summary. No other changes have been made to the specification.
There are no changes to the assessment and the AS and A-level Psychology exam paper design, question types and paper structure remain unchanged. We’ll publish the updated specification on our website in the summer term 2025.
Want to find out more? Join our Curriculum Connect
We want to make sure you feel supported in your teaching and to answer any questions you might have. So, we’re inviting you to join our free online event in November, where you’ll get to hear about the changes in more detail, provide an opportunity to ask us any questions and find out more about what you can expect in the coming weeks and months.
You can register for our Curriculum Connect: Updates to the AQA AS and A-level Psychology specifications sessions now:
- AS and A-level Psychology Curriculum Connect – 4 November 2024, 4.00pm-5.00pm
- AS and A-level Psychology Curriculum Connect – 11 November 2024, 4.00pm-5.00pm
- AS and A-level Psychology Curriculum Connect – 13 November 2024, 4.00pm-5.00pm
- AS and A-level Psychology Curriculum Connect – 20 November 2024, 4.00pm-5.00pm
If you can’t attend these events, don’t worry, you’ll be able to watch a recording on demand from end of November.
Our supporting resources
To make sure you have everything you need to be able to teach and deliver the updated specification, we’ve a full support package and resources lined up to guide you through the changes.
Because some of the subject content will have changed, we'll provide additional sample assessment materials (SAMs) based on the June 2024 exam series, so you can use these for your mocks. The additional SAMs will be available on Centre Services in the summer term 2025.
The original sample assessment materials on our website are available as a relevant guide to our assessment approach. After summer 2025, we’ll label these as no longer suitable for use as practice papers for the updated specification due to the content changes.
If you have any further questions you can get in touch with us by email at psychology@aqa.org.uk or call 01483 477 822.