Extended Project Qualification
EPQ
Extend your academic abilities
The Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) is an opportunity to extend your experience beyond the A Level syllabus. It will prepare you for university, your career and provides extra UCAS points.
Following discussion with Heads of Department and tutors, the EPQ is open to pupils on a voluntary basis, starting in the second term of the Lower Sixth.
What is the EPQ?
The EPQ is a largely self-directed project, completed with some teacher supervision and direction.
You will research a topic area, decide a suitable title, produce a project and present your work in front of an audience.
What is produced can vary greatly. Whilst a 5000 word essay on an issue is one method, you can also submit an ‘artefact’ alongside analysis and explanation. Examples of artefact projects include:
- The creation of a teaching resource on coastal features for a Year 7 class.
- A short story aimed at a teenage audience on the Holocaust.
- An interview with Jane Austen.
EPQ results are judged just as much on the ‘journey’ as the outcome – with research, analysis and evaluation, documents in a ‘research diary’ forming a high proportion of the overall mark.
Why is an EPQ such a good thing?
- It is an opportunity to develop an area of interest.
- It can produce something of a very high standard which goes beyond the constraints of the curriculum.
- There is a great deal of freedom in what candidates can produce – it doesn’t just have to be a written report/ long essay (although it can be).
- It constitutes half an A Level – so an A* is available.
- It develops skills of research, independent learning and presentation which can be preparation for university courses.
- The Presentation Evening will be similar to future experiences at university and beyond.
- It can demonstrate an interest and research in a proposed university course which is not being studied at A Level.
- The EPQ is viewed very positively by universities.
