AQA has made some changes to both the GCSE Religious Studies Specification A (8602) and Short Course (8061) papers for the summer 2026 exams and onwards. Specification B (8063) is not affected by these changes.
New question bank
To support your teaching of the new specification, we have created a new question bank to reflect the changes AQA has made to some of the question types in Spec A (8062) and the Short Course (8061). There are no changes to Spec B questions.
When you log in to the new question bank, you will find updated questions and mark schemes aligned with the new style questions.
The new sample assessment materials (SAMs 1), updated with the new question types, have replaced the legacy ones.
For exam series: SAMs 2, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021
- The 2-mark questions have been reduced to 1-mark
- The 5-mark questions have been changed to 6-mark
Note: the 2 and 5-mark questions from the 2022 to 2024 exam series have been removed at the request of AQA.
For all exam series (i.e. SAMs 2 to 2024), the wording of 4-mark questions has been changed from 'contrasting' to 'different' where applicable.
How to find your saved assignments in the legacy question bank
You can still use the legacy question bank. Log in and you will see a tab labelled ‘Legacy spec tab’. Simply click to access the question bank and all your saved assignments.
