Mock Paper Protocol

Compiled 2026-09-29, from research/veridian/WBS14-verified-facts.md, cross-referenced against forge-exam-technique-guide.md, forge-forty-eight-hour-checklist.md, signal-frequency-and-boundaries.md and content/veridian/curriculum/wbs14/paper-anatomy.ts (all in this folder or content/veridian/curriculum/wbs14/), plus the real level-exemplar questions in content/veridian/question-bank/wbs14.ts. Full citation list at the end.

#WBS14 Mock Paper Protocol — Unit 4: Global Business

#What this document is (and isn't)

This is not a fourth copy of the self-mark checklist, the timing budget, or the trap list — all three already exist, in full, in forge-exam-technique-guide.md (§1–§4), and this document references them by section rather than repeating their contents. What none of the existing WBS14 technique-hub documents cover is the mechanics of sitting and auditing a mock: where a real paper actually comes from, what to watch on the clock while sitting it, what to capture in the few minutes right after finishing, and — the part with the most real, sourced detail behind it — how to self-mark the result against the actual Pearson conventions this course has verified, rather than against a gut feeling of "that felt like a good answer."

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Pearson Edexcel. Every figure, band, quotation and sourcing detail below traces to a real, attributed source — see Sources. Nothing here invents a likelihood, a probability of a topic appearing, or a grade boundary for a future sitting.

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#1. Before: getting hold of a real paper

This course does not hold a local past-paper archive for WBS14. That's stated plainly in this course's own research bank, not glossed over: a directory search across this project's source folders "turned up a full WBS12 (Unit 2) past-paper archive but zero WBS14 (Unit 4) files," and every WBS14 source this course has used was fetched live, question by question, from qualifications.pearson.com or — for three later, narrower pulls — from a third-party mirror when the direct Pearson CDN URL couldn't be located. A mock for this paper has to come from a real, external source: Pearson's own qualifications site, a school or tutor's exam-board portal access, or a subscription past-paper service — not anything bundled with this course.

If the only copy available is a mirror, not Pearson's own site, check it before trusting it. This course's own research had to do exactly this twice (the October 2024 and June 2026 protectionism mark schemes) and describes the check it ran: confirm the Pearson copyright notice, the Publication Code, the Question Paper Log Number, and the General Marking Guidance boilerplate are all internally consistent with a genuine WBS14 document — not a byte-for-byte comparison against a first-party copy, but enough to rule out a fabricated or altered file. Run the same check before treating a downloaded mark scheme as ground truth for self-marking.

Series this course has actually read, if choosing which one to sit matters to you. For self-marking against the exact, real, published level-descriptor wording — not this course's paraphrase of it — the specific questions independently cross-checked against a real mark scheme are: the 8-mark Discuss band, in June 2022 Q1(c) and June 2026 Q1(c); the 12-mark Assess band, in January 2023 Q1(d) and June 2022 Q1(d)/Q1(e); the 20-mark Evaluate band, in June 2022 Q2, October 2024 Q2 and October 2025 Q2. Any of those seven papers is a genuine option if the goal is checking your own self-marking against a level descriptor this course has already verified line-by-line. Two series — October 2023 and January 2024 — exist in this course's research only as narrative Principal Examiner's Report text, without the underlying mark scheme document, so they're weaker choices for a self-marked mock specifically (the report alone doesn't carry the level-band cut-points you'd self-mark against).

Replicate real conditions, not a soft version of them. Two hours, 80 marks, calculator permitted (spec Appendix 10), a Source Booklet you skim in full before committing to Q1 — Q2 and Q3 both key to extracts in the same booklet, so reading it cold at Section B costs time this course's own technique guide already flags as avoidable. No notes, no open lesson pages, and no mid-paper check of a mark scheme — that happens afterward, in Part 3.

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#2. During: the clock checkpoints

forge-exam-technique-guide.md §1 already gives the per-question time budget (1.5 minutes per mark, flat): ~6 min for Q1(a), ~6 for Q1(b), ~12 for Q1(c), ~18 each for Q1(d)/(e), ~30 each for Q2/Q3. That budget is this course's own derived arithmetic (120 minutes ÷ 80 marks), not a Pearson-published schedule — restated here, not re-argued. What it doesn't give is a running clock, which is the thing actually useful mid-mock, when checking "am I on pace" means reading a clock, not doing subtraction under time pressure. Same arithmetic, expressed as elapsed time from a 0:00 start:

Treat every row as a ceiling to notice, not a wall to panic at. forge-exam-technique-guide.md's own advice on what to do when behind still holds here: a stuck 4-mark opener is worth finishing at "good enough, working shown" and moving on, because every minute it eats is a minute stolen from Q1(d), Q1(e), or one of the two essays — together 64 of the paper's 80 marks and nearly all of its AO4 weighting (AO4 is 27.5% of the paper, AO3 30% — together almost 58%, per the spec's own Assessment Information tables). If the 60-minute checkpoint arrives and Section A isn't finished, the right move is to protect the two essays' time, not to protect a still-unfinished Q1(e) at Q2/Q3's expense.

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#3. Immediately after: capture before you mark

Before opening any mark scheme, write down — from memory, while it's still fresh — three things a mark scheme can't tell you and a mark alone will hide:

• Where the clock actually broke down, if it did. Which checkpoint above was missed, and what ate the time — re-deriving a formula, redrawing a diagram's axes twice, or a genuinely difficult question. This is the raw material Part 5 uses to decide what to fix before the next mock.
• Which command word, if any, you had to double back on. forge-exam-technique-guide.md §4's trap 1 is real: the Q1(a) opener changes between Calculate and Construct across series (confirmed: Oct 2021 and Jan 2023 both set Calculate; Jan 2024 and Oct 2024 both set Construct), and a candidate who free-writes prose onto a Construct question, or attempts an unrequested diagram on a Calculate question, loses the K mark for a format reason, not an economics one. If that happened on this sitting, note it now, not after you've already re-read the question and forgotten the confusion. Note it too if "Assess = 10" surfaced anywhere in your head before you corrected to 12 — the real tariff on this paper, not the Unit 1/2 one.
• Which of the two Q1(d)/Q1(e) structural traps you actually walked into, if either. "Return on investment" answered as the investment-appraisal calculation (QS6) rather than the qualitative location-factor judgement it actually is, or an exchange-rate paragraph that doesn't distinguish entering a market from producing in it — both real, examiner-documented traps (the October 2023 and January 2024 Principal Examiner's Reports respectively). Recognising the trap in your own answer before re-reading a mark scheme is worth more than recognising it only once the mark scheme points it out.

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#4. Self-marking: order of operations

Mark in this order — objective before judged, then the extended responses using the real level bands, not the other way round. Marking the judged parts first, then letting a vague sense of "that went well" bleed into how generously the objective parts get marked, is the most common way self-marking drifts from the real mark scheme.

#4.1 The objective marks first — Q1(a) and Q1(b)

Both use the same real K1/App2/An1 shape, confirmed on real mark schemes for both command words (the June 2022 GDP-per-capita Calculate, and the June 2022 Thailand-rubber Explain): one mark for the right formula or mechanism named, two marks for two real pieces of data or evidence pulled from the extract, one mark for the final computed answer or the developed "why." Mark strictly against the real NB rules this course has verified, not against whether the underlying economics is right:

• On Calculate: a fully correct figure with the exact currency symbol and decimal-place count the question asked for scores full marks; the same number without the currency symbol drops a full mark — the June 2022 mark scheme's own NB rule, not a harsh house convention. Check your own answer against this literally: is the $ (or whatever unit was asked for) actually on the page?
• On Construct: the axis labels carry their own dedicated mark, separate from the shift itself — the October 2024 tariff-diagram mark scheme awards one mark specifically for correctly labelled axes, before any mark for the equilibrium shift. A diagram with the right shift but no axis labels, or vaguely-worded ones, is missing a real mark for a real reason.
• Working shown protects a wrong final figure. Both the June 2022 mark scheme's NB rule and its examiner's report make this point directly: a correct method with a slipped final number still banks the K and App marks. If you got the final answer wrong but the method and data pulls were right, mark those marks as earned — don't zero the whole question because the last line is wrong.

#4.2 The extended responses — Q1(c), Q1(d)/(e), Q2/Q3

Use the real, confirmed bands (not the placeholder proportional convention paper-anatomy.ts itself flags as its own, unconfirmed convention): Discuss is a 3-band structure, L1 1–2 / L2 3–5 / L3 6–8 (confirmed identically in June 2022 Q1(c) and June 2026 Q1(c)); Assess and Evaluate are both 4-band, at different totals — Assess: L1 1–2 / L2 3–4 / L3 5–8 / L4 9–12 (confirmed across Jan 2023 Q1(d) and June 2022 Q1(d)/Q1(e)); Evaluate: L1 1–4 / L2 5–8 / L3 9–14 / L4 15–20 (confirmed across June 2022 Q2, October 2024 Q2 and October 2025 Q2).

The judgement call that actually separates L3 from L4 on both Assess and Evaluate is not "is the content accurate" — thorough, accurate knowledge is explicitly still only an L3 feature on this paper's own descriptors, which describe L3 as an attempted assessment "though unlikely to show the significance of competing arguments." L4 asks for reasoning that's "balanced, wide ranging and well contextualised," showing "an awareness of competing arguments/factors, leading to a supported judgement." Two concrete things to check on your own answer, not a vibe: did both sides get roughly even development (not one paragraph of substance and one bolted-on sentence), and does the answer close on a genuinely conditional judgement ("...holds if/when...") rather than a flat, unconditional verdict or a shrugged "it depends" with nothing after it? An answer can be fully accurate and still cap at L3 for missing exactly that closing move.

#4.3 Self-marking honestly — the specific traps in grading yourself, not just answering

Self-marking has its own failure modes, distinct from the ones already documented for answering the paper. Two real Pearson conventions bear directly on how to self-mark fairly, not just what to check:

• Don't dock a valid point for not matching a bullet list you half-remember. A real mark scheme's own general marking guidance states directly that indicative content "does not imply that any of these must be included" for full marks — the bullets are examples of creditable content, not a checklist every one of which must appear. If your answer makes a different, well-reasoned point that isn't on any indicative-content list you've seen, that's not automatically a gap; judge it against the level descriptor's actual wording (does it show a genuine chain of reasoning, is it in context, does it engage with a competing argument), not against whether it happens to match a bullet.
• Don't credit a point that exists only in your head. The mirror-image failure: crediting yourself for the "why" you meant to write but didn't actually put on the page. Read the answer as written, not as intended — this is the same discipline the mark scheme itself applies to a real candidate, and self-marking loses its value the moment it stops applying it to you.
• If a real mark scheme for the series you sat is in hand, mark against it directly rather than against this document's paraphrase of the bands — the level descriptors above are independently confirmed against the specific series named in each citation, but a mark scheme's exact indicative content for your specific mock paper's questions is the actual ground truth, and this document is not a substitute for reading it.

#4.4 Totalling, and reading it against real boundaries — carefully

Add the raw total out of 80. signal-frequency-and-boundaries.md §2 carries this course's own table of real, Pearson-published raw-mark boundaries across nine series (June 2022 → January 2026) — use the range to judge how many marks separate grades on this paper generally (the A boundary alone moves from 41 to 52 raw marks across that window, an 11-mark swing on an 80-mark paper), not any single row as a prediction for your own sitting. A mock's raw score is a real, useful signal about where you sit inside that range; it is not a forecast of what your actual sitting's boundary will be, because the boundary itself moves with how demanding that specific paper was, not with a fixed standard.

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#5. After: turning the result into the next study session

A self-marked mock is diagnostic input, not a verdict — its value is entirely in what it changes about the next few hours of study, not in the number itself. Three concrete links back into material this course already has:

• A weak or wrong answer on a specific sub-question maps to a spec sub-section — signal-frequency-and-boundaries.md §1's table lists which sub-section each real past question has tested, and which curriculum lesson owns it. Use that mapping to go back to the owning lesson, not to re-read the whole paper's worth of content.
• A trap you actually walked into (Part 3's capture) has a name and an owning file — cross-check it against forge-exam-technique-guide.md §4's consolidated trap table, which names both the seven-lesson trap-taxonomy entries and the four paper-wide traps this course found independently of any single spec point. Fixing a named, documented trap is a faster return than generic re-reading.
• If the mock happened inside the last 48 hours before a real sitting, don't treat this protocol and forge-forty-eight-hour-checklist.md as two separate plans — the checklist's own T-24h-to-T-2h window is explicitly a self-test window, and a mock's specific misses (a command word confused, a band shape misapplied, a named example that didn't surface) are exactly the kind of concrete, fresh-from-testing gaps that window is built to fix once, not re-read repeatedly.

If you're sitting more than one mock, don't reuse the same series' Section A extract material as a "new" self-test afterward — you'll be recalling your own prior answer, not testing recall of the underlying spec content. Prefer a different real series for a second mock, from the list in Part 1, or accept that a repeat sit of the same paper is testing timing and self-marking discipline specifically, not fresh recall.

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#6. Scope

This document adds one new fact beyond what the existing WBS14 technique-hub documents already carry — the sourcing-and-verification detail in Part 1, drawn directly from this course's own Flagged Issues log rather than restated from FORGE, SIGNAL or the checklist — and otherwise sequences and extends material those three documents already verified (the timing budget into a running clock, the self-mark checklist into an ordering-and-honesty protocol, the grade-boundary table into a mock-scoring caveat). Where a step above references a real figure, band or quotation, it restates something already independently verified elsewhere in this course; check the owning document (named inline throughout) for the full worked mechanism and provenance.

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#Sources

research/veridian/WBS14-verified-facts.md (Flagged Issues §2, §8–§11: the no-local-archive finding, the third-party-mirror sourcing and authenticity-check method, the exact series/document-type table; the June 2022 Calculate/Explain NB rules and K1/App2/An1 splits; the "does not imply that any of these must be included" indicative-content quotation and its citation trail). forge-exam-technique-guide.md (the per-question timing budget extended into Part 2's clock; the real band structures and level- descriptor wording used in §4.2; the command-word-switch and Q1(d)/(e) structural traps referenced in Part 3; the consolidated trap table referenced in Part 5; its own Sources section for the underlying mark-scheme/examiner-report documents: Mark Scheme October 2021; Mark Scheme + Examiners' Report June 2022 (WBS14_01_2206_MS, P71450A); Mark Scheme January 2023 (WBS14_01_2301, P72456A); Principal Examiner's Report October 2023; Principal Examiner's Report + Mark Scheme January 2024; Mark Scheme + Question Paper October 2024 (WBS14_01_2410_MS, P78408A); Mark Scheme + Question Paper October 2022 (WBS14_01_2210_MS, P72168A); Mark Scheme June 2023 (WBS14_01_2306_MS, P72046A); Mark Scheme January 2022 (WBS14_01_2201); Mark Scheme + Question Paper October 2025 (WBS14_01_2510_MS, P75887A); Mark Scheme June 2026 (WBS14_01_2606_MS, P79710A); Mark Scheme January 2026 (WBS14_01_2601_MS, P79047A)). signal-frequency-and-boundaries.md §1 (spec sub-section-to-lesson mapping used in Part 5) and §2 (the nine-series raw grade-boundary table used in Part 4.4, fetched live from Pearson's own Grade Boundaries PDFs at qualifications.pearson.com). content/veridian/curriculum/wbs14/paper-anatomy.ts (the flat 1.5-min/mark heuristic and its own explicit flag that its 12-mark Assess band is this course's unconfirmed placeholder convention, superseded here by the real bands FORGE independently confirmed). content/veridian/question-bank/wbs14.ts (real past questions with level exemplars, referenced in Part 1 as a source of already-marked model answers for calibration). International A Level Business Specification, Issue 1, September 2017 (Appendix 6 command words, Appendix 7 quantitative skills, Appendix 10 calculators, Assessment Information AO weightings).