A well-structured politics essay integrates assessment objective 3 (AO3) throughout. This means evaluation should not be an afterthought at the end of a paragraph or tacked on as a concluding sentence. Strong responses embed judgement within each paragraph, ensuring a continuous line of evaluative reasoning. The specification requires you to evaluate aspects of politics in order to make strong arguments and draw conclusions.
Its importance as an assessment objective is highlighted by the fact that AO3 is worth one-third of marks on every source, essay and ideology question for all three papers. However, examiners report that AO3 is often the weakest of the AOs in student answers. Failing to use AO3 properly means throwing away marks. Box 1 shows you how to approach AO3 in an essay question.
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