Year 13 OCR A-Level Physics (H556) in 2027

Year 13 OCR A-Level Physics is the second year of one of two separately accredited OCR qualifications — Physics A (H556) or Physics B, Advancing Physics (H557) — and both are sitting papers in June 2027. OCR marks each of their three written papers to its own raw boundary: on Physics A in June 2026, A* fell at 75 on Modelling Physics, 80 on Exploring Physics and 52 on Unified Physics.

A raw 78 out of 100 was an A* on one June 2026 OCR physics paper and an A on the other

OCR publishes its grade boundaries in two layers. The outer layer is the qualification total: 207 out of 270 for an A* on Physics A in June 2026. The inner layer sets a separate raw boundary for each written paper, and it is the layer a Year 13 student actually needs, because nobody sits 270 marks in one afternoon. Of the six highest-ranking pages for this subject checked on 26 September 2026, none published the inner layer.

The two longer Physics A papers are both marked out of 100, which makes them directly comparable, and in June 2026 OCR did not set them alike. Modelling Physics (01) took 75 for an A* and 30 for an E. Exploring Physics (02) took 80 for an A* and 21 for an E. The consequence is immediate: a raw 78 out of 100 was an A* on Modelling Physics and an A on Exploring Physics, in the same series, marked by the same board.

Source: OCR's AS and A Level grade boundaries, June 2026, Version 1.2, published 14 September 2026. The 78-mark example is not a one-off. Counting every whole mark from 0 to 100, 30 of the 101 possible raw marks carried a different grade on Modelling Physics than on Exploring Physics, and all 30 of them sit between 21 and 79 — which is to say, across almost the whole range a real candidate scores in.

Four more of those crossings are worth having in mind while marking. A raw 25 was ungraded on Modelling Physics and an E on Exploring Physics. A raw 35 was an E on Modelling Physics and a D on Exploring Physics. A raw 57 was a B on Modelling Physics and a C on Exploring Physics. A raw 68 was an A on Modelling Physics and a B on Exploring Physics.

The structural reason is the width of the grade band rather than anything about the physics. On Modelling Physics the distance from A* down to E was 45 marks, from 75 to 30. On Exploring Physics it was 59 marks, from 80 to 21 — 14 marks wider on the same 100-mark paper. A wider band spreads the same seven grades over more marks, so each grade occupies more of the scale and the lines land in different places.

What this does not tell you is which paper was harder. Boundaries move with the demand of the particular paper and with how the cohort performed on it, and OCR publishes no statement ranking one against the other. The usable conclusion is narrower and more practical: a mark is meaningless until you know which paper produced it, so a self-marked past paper has to be read against that paper's own line.

Why the per-paper boundaries can be trusted: they add up to 207 exactly

A reasonable worry about using component boundaries is that OCR might scale them before arriving at the qualification grade, in which case marking a single paper against its own line would tell you nothing about the grade at the end. On A-Level Physics it does not. The three Physics A component boundaries add to the published overall boundary exactly, and they do it at every grade.

At A*, 75 plus 80 plus 52 is 207, which is the published overall A*. At A, 65 plus 71 plus 42 is 178. At B, 56 plus 59 plus 36 is 151. At C, 47 plus 46 plus 31 is 124. At D, 39 plus 33 plus 25 is 97. At E, 30 plus 21 plus 19 is 70. Six grades, six exact matches, with no scaling step in between. The same check on Physics B closes just as cleanly: 86 plus 84 plus 45 is 215, and the remaining five grades give 185, 155, 125, 95 and 66, each matching the published overall row.

That has a corollary worth stating plainly, because it is the obvious way to misread the table. Clearing one paper's A* line is not an A*. It is the 270-mark total that is graded, so a candidate who scored 75 on Modelling Physics, 71 on Exploring Physics and 42 on Unified Physics would total 188 — comfortably above the 178 needed for an A, and 19 marks short of the 207 needed for an A*, despite having hit the A* line on the first paper. A per-paper boundary tells you how one paper went. Only the sum tells you the grade.

One component is deliberately outside that arithmetic. The same document lists component 04, the Practical Endorsement in physics, with the note that it does not count towards the overall mark, on both Physics A and Physics B. That is why three papers and not four add up to the total, and it is also why the endorsement result is reported separately rather than moving a candidate between grades. Our OCR A-Level Physics page sets out how the two routes' papers are built and what each one assesses.

Which June 2026 boundaries apply if your Year 13 is on Physics B?

Physics B, Advancing Physics, is graded from the same 270 raw marks as Physics A, but it distributes them differently across its three papers, so none of the Physics A lines transfers. Fundamentals of Physics (01) is marked out of 110, Scientific Literacy in Physics (02) out of 100, and Practical Skills in Physics (03) out of 60.

Reading the two tables side by side turns up one genuine curiosity. Scientific Literacy in Physics (H557/02) is the only Physics B paper marked out of 100, which puts it on the same scale as either of the two 100-mark Physics A papers — and set against Exploring Physics (H556/02) it shared five of its six June 2026 boundaries. A, B, C, D and E fell at 71, 59, 46, 33 and 21 on both. Only A* differed, at 80 on Physics A against 84 on Physics B, a gap of 4 marks.

That is a description of what the published table says, and it should not be stretched into anything else. The two are different papers, written to different specifications and sat by different cohorts; five matching numbers do not make them interchangeable, and they do not indicate that one route is harder than the other. For a Year 13 marking past papers the practical point is the mundane one: use the H557 column if the school entered H557, and the H556 column if it entered H556.

Are both H556 and H557 still sitting papers in June 2027? OCR's own timetable answers it

Both are. The cleanest proof is not a press notice but OCR's own June 2027 Final Examination Timetable, which carries a legend stating that units and components marked with an asterisk indicate the final assessment opportunity. That makes the document self-describing: whichever papers are ending are flagged inside the timetable a candidate is already reading.

Across all 21 pages of that timetable, exactly two physics components carry the asterisk: H157/01 and H157/02 — the two AS Physics B papers. Every A-level component is unmarked. H557/01, H557/02 and H557/03 carry no asterisk; neither do H556/01, H556/02 or H556/03, and neither do the AS Physics A papers H156/01 and H156/02. In the dated listing the asterisked H157/01 sits directly beneath an unasterisked H156/01, which is about as direct a contrast as a source of this kind offers.

OCR's Physics B qualification page states the same thing from the other direction: the final assessment opportunity for AS Level is June 2027, and the final assessment opportunity for A Level is June 2028. Put together, the position for a student in Year 13 during the 2026/27 academic year is straightforward. What ends in June 2027 is AS Physics B. The A-level continues, and a Year 13 entered for H557 sits an ordinary A-level that summer.

Which of the two a student is on is a question about the entry rather than the textbook, and the answer is a code. Physics A is H556, Ofqual qualification number 601/4743/X; Physics B is H557, qualification number 601/4745/3. Both appear on OCR's own qualification pages. Asking the department for the specification code is quicker and more reliable than inferring it from the subject name, since both courses are called OCR A-Level Physics. Our Year 12 OCR A-Level Physics page covers what the Physics B withdrawal means for a cohort starting the course rather than finishing it.

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Six days, then twelve: what the June 2027 spacing gives a Year 13 between papers

The three Physics A papers are not evenly spaced in June 2027, and the uneven gap is the part worth planning around. Modelling Physics is on Friday 21 May 2027 in the morning. Exploring Physics follows 6 days later, on Thursday 27 May 2027, in the afternoon. Unified Physics comes 12 days after that, on Tuesday 8 June 2027, in the morning — 18 days from the first paper to the last.

Source: OCR's June 2027 Final Examination Timetable. Both routes sit in identical slots, which is why one table serves either. The 12-day gap is twice the 6-day one, and that asymmetry is what makes the boundary work above operational rather than academic. Six days is enough to mark a Modelling Physics past paper against the 75 and the 30 that bounded it in June 2026 and act on what that shows; it is not enough to rebuild a topic from the ground up. The 12 days before Unified Physics is the longest stretch in the series, and Unified Physics is the shortest paper of the three at 1 hour 30 minutes.

One further date belongs in a plan rather than a revision timetable. The awarding bodies have designated Wednesday 23 June 2027 as the contingency day for that summer, 15 days after the last physics paper. It is standard contingency planning across all boards rather than a physics arrangement, but it is the outer edge of the exam period, and a family booking travel in June 2027 should know the season does not close on 8 June.

How Leading Tuition works with Year 13 OCR physics students

Our expert OCR A-Level Physics tutors help Year 13 students on both routes, Physics A (H556) and Physics B (H557), working from the specification code a school has actually entered rather than a generic A-level physics syllabus. Much of a Year 13 programme is past-paper work, and the marking is where the detail on this page earns its place: a paper is marked against its own component boundary rather than the 270-mark total, so a student can see that 68 on Modelling Physics and 68 on Exploring Physics were not the same result in June 2026.

That diagnosis then drives what the next session covers. A student sitting consistently near the 59-mark B line on Exploring Physics has a different problem from one clearing 71 there and losing marks on Unified Physics, and the two need different work in the 6-day and 12-day windows between papers. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades. Families working with us on physics often take A-Level Physics tuition alongside another science or maths subject, and some are also preparing for Year 13 OCR A-Level Chemistry, which runs its own two-route structure.

Frequently asked questions about Year 13 OCR A-Level Physics