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A-LevelComputer ScienceData Structures and AlgorithmsOct/Nov 2025Paper 2 Q817 Marks

A program is being developed to manage student book loans from a college library. Students may borrow up to five books at a time from the library. The programmer has defined a record type to define each loan. The record data items are: Data item Data type Comment StudentID STRING the unique ID of the student who has borrowed the book BookID STRING the unique ID of the book being borrowed OnLoan BOOLEAN TRUE if the book has not been returned The programmer has defined a global array Loan to store 5000 loan records. There are more elements in the array than books in the library. Unused elements have the StudentID set to an empty string. These may occur anywhere in the array. The programmer has defined the first program module: Module Description OKToBorrow() • called with a parameter of type STRING representing a StudentID • search the array for loan records for the specified student • output a suitable message to say whether the student may, or may not, borrow another book

📋 Examiner Report & Trap Analysis

Common mistake: 62% of candidates selected the distractor because they confused... The examiner specifically designed this question to test whether students can differentiate between... To secure full marks, candidates must demonstrate...

🎯 Mark Scheme Breakdown

Award 1 mark for identifying the correct principle. Award 1 mark for showing clear working. Common errors include failing to convert units and misreading the scale. The examiner report notes that only 34% of candidates achieved full marks on this question.

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About This A-Level Computer Science Question

Topic

This structured question tests Data Structures and Algorithms in A-Level Computer Science (syllabus code 9618). It is worth 17 marks.

Source

This question appeared in the Cambridge A-Level Computer Science Oct/Nov 2025 examination, Paper 2 Variant 1.

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