Important: Yet More Tinkering from AQA Economics

The AQA exam board - whose stock among many economics departments across the UK has been in freefall in recent times - has just released (nine days before the main AS and A2 papers start) the following changes to their exam rubric.

AS exams

“The 2 optional questions will now be labelled Context 1 and Context 2 (instead of Question 26 and Question 27).
Candidates will still need to answer EITHER Context 1 OR Context 2.
Each context will still contain four-part questions, with a total of 50 marks.”

A2 exams

Section A
“The 2 optional questions will now be labelled Context 1 and Context 2 (instead of Question 1 and Question 2).
Candidates will still need to answer EITHER Context 1 (The Global Economy) OR Context 2 (The European Union Context).
Each context will still contain three-part questions, with a total of 40 marks.”

Section B
The three optional questions will now be labelled Essay 1, Essay 2 and Essay 3 (instead of Question 3, Question 4 and Question 5).
Candidates will need to answer either Essay 1 or Essay 2 or Essay 3.
Each essay will still comprise two-part questions, with a total of 40 marks.”

So just a change of title at the top of each section .... as we know the AQA board is obsessed with the idea of context .... this is one of the WEESTEPS approach to evaluation that we quite like

I noticed a few days ago that the AQA is still advertising from assistant examiners for their Unit 4 paper. Many centres will be wondering whether they have managed to overcome a crisis of confidence in their examining procedures and an endemic and stubborn refusal to listen to their centres? It is also time for them to stop charging in excess of £200 a day for INSET events that consist largely of exam board retainers reading from PowerPoint scripts.