Start here: the papers and your route | A Level Biology 9700

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9700 is assessed by five papers, and you will not sit all of them at once. Two of the five are practical papers testing skills rather than recall, and together they are worth more than a third of the A Level. Knowing which papers you are entered for, and what each rewards, changes how you should revise.

📋The five papers

Paper 1 — Multiple Choice. 1 hour 15 minutes, 40 marks, 40 four-choice questions on the AS content. 31% of the AS Level, 15.5% of the A Level. Tests AO1 and AO2 equally.
Paper 2 — AS Level Structured Questions. 1 hour 15 minutes, 60 marks, structured questions on the AS content. 46% of the AS Level, 23% of the A Level — the largest single component of the AS. Tests AO1 and AO2 equally.
Paper 3 — Advanced Practical Skills. A laboratory practical test, 2 hours, 40 marks. 23% of the AS Level, 11.5% of the A Level. Entirely AO3. Contexts may be outside the syllabus content.
Paper 4 — A Level Structured Questions. 2 hours, 100 marks, on the A Level content — but AS knowledge is required throughout. 38.5% of the A Level, the largest component of all. Tests AO1 and AO2 equally.
Paper 5 — Planning, Analysis and Evaluation. A written paper, 1 hour 15 minutes, 30 marks. 11.5% of the A Level. Entirely AO3, and needs no laboratory — but it assumes many hours spent in one.

Two things follow from that table that students consistently miss. Paper 2 is worth more than Paper 1 at AS, despite covering the same content, because structured questions can probe AO2 more deeply. And Papers 3 and 5 together are 34.5% of the A Level — more than Paper 4 — while requiring a completely different kind of preparation.

🔄The three routes

Cambridge sets out three ways through the qualification:

Route 1 — AS Level only. Papers 1, 2 and 3, all in the same exam series. Eligible for grades a to e.
Route 2 — A Level staged over two years. Year 1: Papers 1, 2 and 3. Year 2: Papers 4 and 5, carrying forward the AS marks subject to the rules and time limits in the Cambridge Handbook.
Route 3 — A Level in one series. All five papers together. Eligible for grades A* to E.

If you take the A Level and fail to reach grade E, you may still be awarded an AS Level grade, provided you sat all the AS components in that series and performed well enough on them.

🎯What the assessment objectives actually reward

AO1 Knowledge and understanding — 40%

AO2 Handling, applying and evaluating information — 40%

AO3 Experimental skills and investigations — 20%

Those weightings are identical at AS and at A Level. Read them again: only 40% of the marks are for knowing things. The other 60% are for applying knowledge to unfamiliar situations, interpreting data, evaluating evidence, and designing and criticising experiments.

That is why the papers are full of contexts you have never studied, graphs of organisms you have never met and experiments nobody showed you. They are not being unfair; they are testing AO2 and AO3, which cannot be tested on familiar material. Revision that consists only of re-reading notes prepares for less than half the paper.

📝Command words

A correct answer to the wrong command word scores nothing. The distinctions that matter most:

Describe — state the points of a topic, give the characteristics and main features. No reasons required.
Explain — set out purposes or reasons, make the relationships between things clear, say why and/or how, and support with relevant evidence. If your answer contains no “because”, you have probably described.
Suggest — apply knowledge and understanding to a situation where there is a range of valid responses. This is the signal that you are not expected to know the answer, and that a reasoned proposal will be credited.
Discuss — write about the issue in depth in a structured way. Usually more than one side is required.
Outline — set out the main points, briefly.
State — express in clear terms; no explanation wanted.
Compare — similarities and/or differences. Contrast — differences only.
Calculate — work out from given information, showing your working. Determine — establish an answer using the information available.
Predict — suggest what may happen, based on the information given.
Sketch — a simple freehand drawing showing the key features.

Two of these were reworded slightly in the newer syllabus version, but only in wording, not in what they ask for: Define became “give a precise meaning”, and Explain now reads “make the relationships between things clear / say why and/or how”.

🔬Practical work is not optional preparation

The syllabus states that learners should spend at least 20% of their course time doing practical work individually or in small groups, and that this figure excludes time spent watching demonstrations and simulations. Cambridge expects practical activity to underpin the teaching of the whole syllabus, not to be a separate module bolted on before Paper 3.

There is a reason beyond the exam. Universities want evidence that applicants have actually done practical science, and the skills involved — accurate measurement, careful observation, judging when a result is anomalous, and the patience to repeat — transfer to almost everything else. If your school offers you laboratory time, take all of it.

Two pages here cover the practical papers directly: Paper 3 and Paper 5.

📅Which syllabus version applies to you

Cambridge publishes 9700 in overlapping windows. Two are current:

For exams in 2025, 2026 and 2027 — version 1, published September 2022.
For exams in 2028, 2029 and 2030 — version 1, published September 2025.

The subject content is the same in both. The same nineteen topics with the same numbering and the same learning outcomes; the same five papers with the same durations, marks and weightings; the same three routes; the same assessment objectives and weightings; the same mathematical requirements, formulae and statistical tests; and the same practical assessment expectations and mark allocations. Cambridge’s own change note for the newer version says there are no significant changes which affect teaching, and that textbooks endorsed for examination from 2022 remain suitable.

What did change is minor and administrative: a handful of command word wordings (noted above); some hazard codes in the list of materials for Paper 3; the routes table now shows explicit “no” entries; and carrying forward an AS result is now described as carrying forward AS marks.

So these notes apply to candidates sitting 2025 through 2030, and past papers from anywhere in that span are fair practice. Check the syllabus version for your own examination year anyway — it takes a minute, and windows do eventually change.

🔗Before you go further

Three things worth doing once, at the start of the course, rather than in the week before the exam.

Confirm which papers you are entered for, and in which series. Your exams officer knows; your assumption may not be right.
Download the syllabus for your examination year and read the learning outcomes for one topic you think you know well. The precision of the wording — what is “limited to”, what is “not expected” — is a revision tool in itself.
Read one examiner report. Any one. It will change how you write answers more than another pass through the notes.