Frequency and Boundaries

Compiled 2026-09-28. Section 1 is built from research/veridian/WBS14-verified-facts.md's own per-topic citation trail (cross-checked against the FORGE guide and CODEX bank in this same folder, which draw on the same source). Section 2 is fetched fresh for this document, live from qualifications.pearson.com's official Grade Boundaries PDFs (see per-row sourcing note) — not present anywhere in the facts bank, which carries no grade-boundary data at all.

#WBS14 SIGNAL — Topic Frequency and Grade Boundaries — Unit 4: Global Business

#What this document is (and isn't)

This is deliberately the thinnest of the three WBS14 technique-hub documents. The real, live question-bank at content/veridian/question-bank/wbs14.ts already does SIGNAL's usual job — real past questions with level exemplars — for the four spec points it currently covers (EU fishing subsidies, the protectionism-on-global-businesses essay in two series, and niche-market 4Ps adaptation). This document doesn't repeat that. It adds only two things the FORGE guide and CODEX bank don't carry: which spec sub-sections have actually been seen in an exam, how often, and at what tariff, and real published grade boundaries. A short "how to use this" closes it.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Pearson Edexcel.

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#1. Topic frequency, by spec sub-section

The facts bank's own core sample is 5 series read in full (October 2021, June 2022, January 2023, October 2023, January 2024) — every Section A/B/C question in each of those five was actually read. A separate set of later, single-question targeted pulls (each confirming one spec point in one additional series, not a full re-read of that series) added: October 2024, June 2026, January 2026, October 2025, October 2022, January 2022, June 2023. Counts below keep the two kinds of evidence visibly separate, exactly as the facts bank itself does — a topic "seen in 0 of 5" that was then found via a targeted pull is real, confirmed content, just not part of the systematic count.

Never read this as a probability. "Seen in 3 of 5 series checked" describes a small, non-random sample of a ~15-series population (first assessment was June 2020) — it is not a 60% chance the topic appears again.

Thin sub-points, honestly flagged (echoing the FORGE guide's own flag, still true here):

• "Other trade barriers" (4.3.1.4, the government-legislation/non-tariff-non-quota catch-all) and the general "reasons for protectionism" list are not confirmed as standalone mark-scheme content in any pull checked so far — not the 5 systematic series, and not any of the 7 additional targeted series either (which between them have now confirmed tariffs, quotas, subsidies and the impact essay for this same spec point). This is a genuine gap in the evidence, not a low-probability topic — it may simply not have been the one this course's research happened to pull.
• EU and NAFTA specifically (the spec's other two named trading blocs, alongside ASEAN) were not the central case in any of the 5 systematic series, or in any targeted pull. ASEAN, plus the non-spec-named AfCFTA and RCEP, are the only real applied cases found so far.
• 4.3.2.2 (market assessment) and 4.3.3.2 (niche markets) both show 0 of 5 in the systematic sample — both are real, confirmed, exam-tested spec points (Porter's five forces twice; niche markets twice, on two different sub-points), just not caught by the original 5-series read. Treat "0 of 5" here as a sampling gap, not as evidence the topic is untested — the targeted-pull column is the correct place to look for these two.
• 4.3.1.4 Protectionism as a whole is the clearest case of this pattern: zero hits in the 5 systematic series, then five separate real confirmations once later passes went looking — a reminder that this table describes what this course's research has actually read, not the full space of what Pearson has actually set.

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#2. Grade boundaries

The facts bank carries no grade-boundary data at all (checked directly — zero matches for "grade boundar[y/ies]" anywhere in research/veridian/WBS14-verified-facts.md). The table below was fetched fresh for this document, directly from Pearson's own published Grade Boundaries PDFs at qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Support/Grade-boundaries/International-A-level/, and extracted with pdftotext -layout, filtered to the WBS14 Unit 4: Global Business row of each document's "International A2 unit grade boundaries" table. These are real, Pearson-published figures — not derived, not estimated.

Raw mark boundaries, WBS14 (out of 80), by series:

Nine series, June 2022 → January 2026. A grade boundary is the minimum raw mark for that grade (a mark one below a boundary drops to the next grade down); U is always below the E boundary.

Three things worth knowing before using this table:

1. These are unit (raw-mark) boundaries, not the overall subject "cash-in" boundaries, which are published in UMS marks only, in the same PDFs, and aren't reproduced here since this document is paper-specific.
2. A here is Pearson's own "theoretical" A2-unit boundary* — published for every International A2 unit, but it doesn't certificate an A* for the unit itself; A* only applies to the overall qualification, via a separate rule. Read A, not A*, as the top real unit grade.
3. Raw boundaries move every series — the A boundary alone ranges from 41 (June 2022) to 52 (June/October 2025) here, an 11-mark swing on an 80-mark paper, because they compensate for how demanding that specific paper was, not because the standard changed. Never memorise one series' boundary as "the" boundary. Three consecutive series (June 2023, October 2023, January 2024) happened to publish identical raw boundaries — a real coincidence, not evidence of a fixed number.

Sourcing (all fetched live for this document, 2026-09-28, pdftotext -layout against the official PDF at each URL, base path https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Support/Grade-boundaries/International-A-level/): June 2022 → 2206-ial-subject-grade-boundaries.pdf; June 2023 → 2306-...pdf; October 2023 → 2310-...pdf; January 2024 → 2401-...pdf; October 2024 → 2410-...pdf; January 2025 → 2501-...pdf; June 2025 → grade-boundaries-june-2025-international-advanced-level.pdf; October 2025 → 2510-...pdf; January 2026 → 2601-...pdf.

October 2021 and January 2023 were attempted and returned a genuine 404 at the equivalent guessed URL — left out rather than estimated. If those two series' boundaries are needed later, they exist on Pearson's site under a different URL pattern than this pass found and need a fresh search, not a guess from the pattern above.

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#3. How to use this

• Frequency table (§1): use it to sequence revision, not to skip anything — the spec is the actual scope, this table is evidence about where past papers have actually landed, not a prediction. A "0 of 5" row (protectionism, market assessment, niche markets) is not lower-priority — two of those three turned out to be tested repeatedly once anyone looked past the original five series.
• Grade boundaries (§2): use the range, not any single row, to judge how many raw marks separate grades on this paper generally (roughly 6-8 marks between adjacent A2-unit boundaries most series) — useful for deciding whether a weak Q1(a) is worth extra time to fix or worth abandoning for Q1(d)/ Q1(e), not for predicting this series' exact cutoff.
• For real past questions with full level exemplars, go to content/veridian/question-bank/wbs14.ts directly — that file, not this one, is SIGNAL's actual question-bank function for this paper.
• For technique (command words, timing, self-mark checklist, traps), see forge-exam-technique-guide.md in this same folder. For definitions and short application material, see codex-definitions-and-application-bank.md. This document adds only frequency and boundaries — it doesn't re-teach either.

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#Sources

Section 1: research/veridian/WBS14-verified-facts.md (own citation trail per spec sub-section, its own "Flagged issues" and "Topics needing more research" sections). Section 2: Pearson Edexcel official Grade Boundaries PDFs, International AS/A Level, series June 2022 through January 2026 (URLs listed above), fetched and extracted directly for this document, 2026-09-28.