Cambridge A-Level Global Perspectives: The Team Project — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, testing understanding of Component 3’s structure and requirements rather than providing a template problem statement or presentation content, since these must be genuinely developed by each candidate’s own team. Use these alongside the official syllabus and your teacher’s guidance.

Related: The Team Project revision notes

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Section A

1. State the total marks for Component 3 and how they split between the presentation and the reflective paper. [3]

2. State the maximum length of the presentation and the maximum word count of the reflective paper. [2]

3. Name the two assessment objectives the presentation is marked against. [2]

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Section B

4. A team of five students decides to research “poverty” as their problem, with each member planning to research a different country’s poverty statistics.

(a) Identify the weakness in this problem statement, according to the syllabus’s expectations. [2] (b) Suggest how the team could narrow it to meet the “local problem with global relevance” requirement while still supporting genuinely distinct individual angles. [3]

5. A candidate submits a team presentation, recorded with all five team members speaking in turn, as their Component 3 submission.

(a) State whether this submission would be accepted. [1] (b) Explain why. [2]

6. A candidate writes their reflective paper before finishing their presentation, restating their proposed solution and summarising their research findings within it.

(a) Identify two problems with this reflective paper. [2] (b) Explain what a reflective paper should focus on instead. [3]

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Section C

7. Explain why the syllabus places a firm limit on what a teacher may do to support a candidate once research and preparation for Component 3 begins, and give two specific examples of support that would cross this line. [6]

8. A candidate spends most of their preparation time polishing their presentation slides and rehearsing delivery, with comparatively little time spent researching or evaluating sources. Evaluate this preparation strategy in light of how the presentation’s 30 marks are allocated. [6]

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Worked answers

1. 40 marks total: 30 marks for the presentation, 10 marks for the reflective paper. [3]

2. Maximum 10 minutes for the presentation; maximum 800 words for the reflective paper. [2]

3. AO1 (Research, analysis and evaluation) and AO3 (Communication). [2]

4. (a) “Poverty” alone is too abstract and global in scope; the syllabus expects a local problem with global relevance, meaning it should name a real, specific place, group or situation rather than a broad global issue researched at the level of entire countries. [2] (b) For example, narrowing the problem to a specific, named local context — such as a particular town or community facing a specific poverty-related issue (housing insecurity, access to healthcare, or food security) — which still has clear global relevance (poverty as a shared global issue) but allows each member to research a genuinely distinct angle on the same concrete situation, such as economic causes, policy responses, or social impact. [3]

5. (a) No. [1] (b) The syllabus is explicit that team presentations are not accepted for submission — only individual work is marked. Each candidate must submit their own individually authored and individually assessed presentation on their own research and preferred solution, even though the underlying research process was collaborative. [2]

6. (a) Any two of: it was written before the presentation was finished, meaning genuine reflection on the whole process (including its difficulties) was not yet possible; it restates the proposed solution and summarises research findings, which duplicates the presentation rather than reflecting on process and collaboration; it is assessed against AO2 (Reflection) specifically, and content that belongs in the presentation does not earn AO2 marks. [2] (b) A reflective paper should focus on how effectively the team worked together and what could have been improved, and on the candidate’s own learning — which may relate to the problem itself, research skills developed, presentation skills developed, or how the collaborative experience shaped their personal views — rather than restating research findings or the proposed solution already covered in the presentation. [3]

7. The syllabus limits teacher support once research and preparation begin because Component 3 is assessed as individual work, and the mark scheme is designed to credit each candidate’s own research, analysis, evaluation and communication skills — if a teacher provided detailed subject guidance or corrected a candidate’s work, the assessment would no longer reliably reflect that candidate’s own ability. Two examples of support that would cross this line: a teacher carrying out research on a candidate’s behalf (rather than helping the candidate understand how to research), and a teacher suggesting specific amendments to a candidate’s presentation or reflective paper (rather than general guidance on understanding the task). [6]

8. This strategy risks under-preparing for where the greater share of the presentation’s marks actually sit. AO1 (research, analysis and evaluation) covers four separately assessed elements — individual analysis of the problem, range of research undertaken, evaluation of sources, and justification of the candidate’s own proposed solution — against AO3’s (communication) three elements, so spending disproportionate preparation time on polish and delivery rather than on genuinely researching and evaluating a range of sources risks leaving the larger mark allocation under-addressed. This does not mean communication is unimportant — a poorly delivered presentation of strong research will still lose AO3 marks — but a candidate under time pressure should prioritise research depth over presentation polish, since research-related criteria carry more of the available marks. [6] (Marks for correctly identifying the AO1/AO3 balance and explaining a genuine, reasoned implication for time allocation, not simply asserting research matters more.)

Official syllabus

Cambridge International AS & A Level Global Perspectives & Research (9239) syllabus for examination in 2026, 2027 and 2028 (Version 3, published December 2025), section 4 (“Details of the assessment — Component 3 — Team Project”) — the same specification cited by the Team Project study guide and its revision notes. Verified 2026-09-02.