FREE OCR RS A Level: 40/40 Plato & Aristotle full essay plans

These notes provide everything you need to get 40/40 in Ancient Philosophical Influences: Plato and Aristotle questions. The plans are clear, easy to read and colour-coded so you can see AO1 and AO2. I’ve been tutoring OCR RS A Level for over a decade, and I have a degree in Theology from Cambridge.

I’m offering them for free as a sample of my wider set of essay plans for OCR RS.

These aren’t textbook-style notes explaining the thinkers. They cut straight to the point and give you 40/40 essays for all possible questions on Plato versus Aristotle for the OCR A Level.

These plans use a structure of six paragraphs, with two AO1 and four AO2. You could, instead, have paragraphs that mix AO1 and AO2. Whatever you do, two thirds of your essay should be AO2 because two thirds of the marks are AO2.

There are many other strengths and weaknesses of these theories, this is just one way of writing 40/40 essays. You may have to adapt a plan to the exact wording of the question set, but in OCR RS there are a small number of possible question themes and these plans cover all those themes, if not the exact wording of every possible question.

With Plato and Aristotle, you may get a question focusing on just one of them, or a question that mentions both. In either case, you can use a plan in which they argue with each other, as they are the main rival theories to each other.

There are three plans — one supporting Plato against Aristotle, one supporting Aristotle against Plato, and one for the narrower question on the Form of the Good vs the Prime Mover.