In considering marking schemes the following points should be noted:

The examination material is provided by MATSEC and is intended for use in the course of instruction, whether at school or elsewhere, by a teacher or pupil.

Users may retrieve examination material solely for their own personal, non-commercial use, and may download the material to their own hard disk or send it to a printer solely for that purpose. They may not otherwise copy, modify, or distribute the examination material, or publish, broadcast, transmit, or otherwise distribute any portion of this material without the express written authorisation of MATSEC. Any unauthorised use is strictly prohibited. MATSEC permits no unauthorised modifications, adaptations, or translations of the examination material.

The marking scheme is a guide to awarding marks to candidates’ answers and should not be considered as model answers.

In some instances only key words are given, words that must appear in the correct context in the candidate’s answer in order to merit the assigned marks. This does not preclude synonyms or phrases which convey the same meaning as the answer in the marking scheme.

There can be more than one equally acceptable answer. Although synonyms are generally acceptable, there may be instances where the scheme demands an exact scientific or technical term and equivalent non-scientific/technical or colloquial terms will not be accepted.

Descriptions, methods and definitions in the scheme may not be exhaustive and alternative valid answers may be acceptable.