CCEA GCE A Level Software Systems Development (589) Past Papers 2026

Written examination

Duration: 2h

Internal assessment (coursework)

Duration: Internally assessed, externally moderated

Written examination

Duration: 2h

Internal assessment (coursework)

Duration: Internally assessed, externally moderated

2D arrays — declaration, population, and nested-loop traversal

Flagged in the 2024 AS 1 report as a recurring weakness: 'many candidates were not able to create a 2d array, with many creating a 1d array.' Despite appearing in multiple previous series, candidates continue to conflate 1D and 2D array syntax and fail to use nested loops to access elements correctly.

AS 1

Object serialisation — concept and implementation

The 2025 AS 1 report identified serialisation as 'poorly answered, with many candidates scoring zero.' Candidates failed to recognise that the core purpose of serialisation is to persist object state outside the running application, and were unable to identify the [Serializable] attribute or the BinaryFormatter pattern from code context.

AS 1

User story format — definition and applying the As a… I want… so that… structure

The 2025 A2 1 report noted that the user story concept was 'generally poorly answered' despite featuring in previous papers: 'some candidates unable to accurately describe the term user story or apply it to the context provided.' Weaker responses confused user stories with general user requirements.

A2 1

Sequence diagrams — components and construction

In the 2024 A2 1 report, sequence diagram questions were 'quite poorly answered by candidates, with many failing to identify the components associated with sequence diagrams.' The 2023 report noted that candidates must be able to identify the structure and function of use case, class, and sequence diagrams and provide evaluative commentary.

A2 1

Design-stage testing — walkthroughs and inspections before implementation

The 2025 A2 1 report identified this as a clear gap: 'Many candidates wrote broadly about the testing phases of program (unit), integration, system and user acceptance testing, rather than addressing the concept of testing at the design stage.' Very few candidates described how walkthroughs or inspections of diagrams and algorithms identify errors before coding begins.

A2 1

Relationship and cardinality terminology in database questions

The 2025 A2 1 report noted 'noticeable confusion when describing Relationships and Cardinality. Many candidates used the terms interchangeably or offered vague explanations that did not accurately convey the nature of associations between entities or the multiplicity of those relationships.'

A2 1

Database connectivity and hard-coded connection strings in coursework

Across all three years (2023, 2024, 2025), the A2 2 moderator flagged submissions where database connections were not tested before submission or where connection strings were hard-coded. This caused applications to fail during moderation and directly reduced AO2 marks.

A2 2

Type-checking and casting objects in polymorphic arrays

The 2025 AS 1 report identified that in object-array processing questions, 'less able candidates continued to find this area challenging. The most common issues were failing to check type before use, not casting correctly to access properties, and printing totals without currency formatting.' Candidates attempted to sum directly on the base type without confirming the concrete subtype.

AS 1