As a student, you’ve probably understood for a long time now that you are assessed on pretty much everything that you do, whether it’s homework, exams, class participation, or anything else that you can imagine.
Well, IGCSE Economics (Cambridge Subject Code 0455) is no different.
The subject too has its own set of assessment objectives – things that define how you will be assessed as an economics student, whether as a good one or a not-so-good one.
So let’s be a little more clear about this.
🧠 What Are Assessment Objectives?
Assessment objectives (AOs) are the specific skills, abilities, or understandings that a student is expected to demonstrate in order to be evaluated meaningfully. They form the foundation of what is being assessed.
They answer the question:
“What exactly are we trying to measure?”
🔍 How Do They Relate to the Word “Assess”?
Remember the Latin assidēre — “to sit beside [a judge]”? The role of the assessor was not merely to observe but to make a judgment — based on criteria.
Assessment objectives are the modern expression of those criteria.
They:
- Define what kinds of knowledge or skill are being valued.
- Provide a basis for judgment (standardization).
- Make the act of assessing transparent and justifiable.
These are not suggestions — they are what will determine your score. Your writing is assessed against these.
⚙️ Why Are Assessment Objectives Important?
- Clarity: They tell you what matters. (No more guessing what the examiner wants.)
- Consistency: Markers can evaluate different students against a shared standard.
- Fairness: Students are judged by performance against stated criteria, not impressionistic bias.
- Design Alignment: Exams, rubrics, and mark schemes are all structured to reflect the AOs.
🧩 What It Means in Practice
When a teacher marks a paper, they’re not just saying “This is good” or “This is weak.”
They’re implicitly (or explicitly) saying:
- Did this student demonstrate AO1?
- How well did they meet AO2?
In other words:
We assess in reference to the assessment objectives.
We measure in reference to assessment objectives – we quantify, count, judge.
If a student demonstrates what we are looking for, we reward that – if they don’t, we do not.
Does it seem arbitrary? Are your marks too low? Then maybe understand the assessment objectives more closely and the marking schemes that operationalize them in the exam context to determine how every single point is allocated and accounted for.
🧠 How Do Assessment Objectives Matter?
The phrase “assessment objectives” is a kind of contract: it declares what you will be judged on, in advance. It aligns the ancient role of the assessor — sitting beside the work — with the modern idea of accountability, standardization, and pedagogical clarity.
It transforms “assessment” from something vague and fearful into something logical and methodical — something you can engineer.
Now let’s do a bit of a deep dive into all of the assessment objectives and why they matter in this context.
1. AO1 – Knowledge and Understanding
According to Cambridge, to demonstrate knowledge and understanding, you need to know about economic definitions, formulas, and ideas. But that’s not all. You need to be able to prove your understanding and show your ability to use the language of economics.
When I say use the language of economics, I don’t mean that you just repeat the definition like a parrot.
I mean that you are actually able to make use of the definitions in order to understand the real world. To understand the situations that you are presented. To be able to look at things that are happening and then make assessments based on the theory that you’re going to be learning.
If it were just about memory, then you could just memorize an economics textbook. But that’s not all you need to do for knowledge and understanding go beyond that – it is about being able to fluidly use the concepts that you’ve learned. Understand when to use them and understand intuitively how they apply when confronted with novel situations. But this then brings us to…
2. AO2 – Analysis
Knowledge and understanding is about understanding the facts and comprehending them. Analysis is about using your knowledge and understanding.
Being able to analyze means being able to look at what you see and understand it by understanding the patterns that are present, and to be able to comment effectively and intelligently on what you’re seeing.
For example, suppose that there is a drought in an onion-producing country (India, let’s say – the country produces the majority of Malaysia’s onions).
Here are some questions that you might ask and some that you might be expected to be able to respond to.
- How does that affect the demand for onions? Does it affect it or does it not affect it?
- How does it affect the supply?
- How does it affect the price? Will it definitely affect the price? What might influence that?
- Can you illustrate that situation with graphs?
- Can you predict the effect on the price of onions based on the theory that you’ve learned?
- Based on onion data, before and after the drought, can you make any statements that are supported by the data and that you have good reason to believe?
- Can you reason about what happened if the price of onions has fallen if there was a massive harvest season?
- Can you look at a diagram that somebody has drawn or written and then understand what is being said?
- Can you look at novel or new situations and then analyze them as and when you will?
- Can you look at what is happening out there in the world and then break down larger problems into smaller ones?
- How do the dots connect and why?
- Can you clearly and logically justify every statement you make about the world based on what you’ve learned, and formulate intelligent arguments that can guide people’s decisions?
All of these are related to being able to analyze situations – to look beneath what you see on the surface to discover the deeper truths.
That’s the skill that you will learn on this course, and it may be more practical than you even know or think about at the moment.
3. AO3 – Evaluation
Analysis was about understanding things and developing a single interpretation, but you can think of evaluation as the skill to choose between different interpretations and to consider limitations and alternatives. It means weighing alternatives, judging them against one another, and understanding and being able to choose between different analyses of situations.
Why is this important? Well, the late Charlie Munger once said, “To the man with a hammer, everything is a nail.”
In this context, you can think of the hammer as the economic theory. The problem is, oftentimes we are the ones holding the hammers, especially when we don’t have a strong understanding and can’t accurately or clearly think about what is happening in this world, often finding ourselves in the wrong territory infinitely more likely or often than in territory where we are correct, caught in the parroting of definitions, the usage of understanding in order to find constellations of real patterns in the stars and in the markets but somehow being unable to choose the correct ones.
Consider some of the following points:
- Economics is complex. The choices that people make depend on many different factors, and there are many different ways of understanding how or why something happens. The question is, what are the correct ways of understanding things, and can you show that you recognize the fact that there are many different ways of understanding the world?
- Not every analysis of data is necessarily correct. There can be gaps, data insufficiencies, problems with the method of analysis, or the way that a claim was argued that ultimately makes it impossible to make a reasonable or logical conclusion.
- At the end of the day, not all conclusions, assessments, or opinions are equal. There are some that are better than others.
- Are you able to choose the best ones? Not only the ones that you hear or parrot from other people, but rather the ones in your own mind, even as they compete for your attention for the right to shape your understanding of the world?
And well, that’s about it. It’s pretty interesting to think about what makes a good economics student.
But knowledge, analysis, and evaluation are a good place to start.
I would point out, though, that these are not siloed things.
One cannot evaluate without being able to do an analysis, and one cannot do an analysis without having knowledge in the first place – but at the same time, having more knowledge increases the likelihood that a person can conduct a good and useful analysis, while experience of analysis in turn helps make a person familiar with patterns of thinking that are not just their own but also potentially other people’s.
The question of how to develop these skills is one that is highly individual but that comes from curiosity and a wish to develop the learning necessary to satisfy it as well as the hunger to continue being curious for a lifetime – but to begin doing that, you must first ask the question.
From there, whether you like it or not, your mastery can be assessed, quantified, put into tangible numbers through the assessment objectives.
It can seem a little harsh, but it is a fact – there is a difference between good and bad, and if you’re here, sepupus, you know what to aim for. ✨
Here is to your economics journey and to many more of those questions – Hope you enjoyed learning about the Assessment Objectives (AO), and see you in the next ones ahead!
V.
