All about A level History – course information

The focus of any A Level History course will be on explaining why things happened, not compiling a list of events, although you will need to back up your argument with evidence and examples drawn from the events. This emphasis on analysis and explanation is why History A Level is such good intellectual training, whether you have any interest in studying the subject at university or not. It teaches you to evaluate a mass of information, pick out what is relevant to the question you want to answer, and organise it in a coherent argument leading to a logical conclusion. It will help you to improve your note taking technique as well. Making good notes depends on identifying what information is important, and organising it in a way that makes it easy to use. These skills are directly transferable to many courses in other subjects, and mean that a high predicted grade in History will help you get offers from good universities.

All A Level options are examined by a combination of essays and source-based questions. The source questions involve analysing either historians’ arguments or contemporary documents, and deciding two things about them – what do they say that is relevant to the question, and how much weight can we put on it? This teaches you how to read a source critically, thinking about why it chooses to put some points in, and perhaps more crucially, leave others out. Again, this is a skill that will help you tackle many other subjects, such as law or philosophy.

This is also true of the coursework element in most courses, which gives you the opportunity to gain 20% of the total marks for the A Level before the exams, and is particularly helpful for anyone who is prone to exam nerves or timing problems. There are different coursework options, but they all involve critical analysis of documents of the time and the interpretations of historians. Evaluating other people’s arguments rather than just accepting them without much thought is a life skill as well as an academic one, helpful in almost any job (and while using the Internet). Completing a 3000-4000 word piece of coursework based on this analysis is also good preparation for university, where many courses in a great variety of subjects involve writing a dissertation or report using just these skills, as do many jobs.

The other 80% of the marks will come from exams. How these are organised varies between exam boards, but Edexcel is fairly typical. Students sit three papers, two of which last 2 hours

15 minutes, and the other 1 hour 30 minutes. The longer papers are worth 30% of the total mark each, and the shorter one is worth 20%. All involve a mixture of essay and source-based questions. On Edexcel all questions are marked out of 20, and are allocated 45 minutes each, but other boards have questions of different lengths. Whatever options your college chooses, you will be given plenty of practice at answering all sorts of questions in timed conditions. This is very important, as is learning to plan your answers before you start to write. Students sometimes see planning answers as a waste of time, but a concise plan will save you time because it will remove the need to stop after every paragraph and think about what comes next. Producing a tightly focussed piece of writing in a short time is a skill that many employers look for, particularly in law and business.

History can be combined with any other A Level subjects. Traditional pairings include English, classics, modern languages, geography and politics, but successfully combining history with maths or science will give universities impressive evidence of all round ability. All universities take History seriously as a major academic subject, which is an important consideration if you are aiming for a highly competitive course at a Russell Group university.

You do not need to have done History GCSE to tackle the A Level, although it may help a little at first if you have. Do not worry if there is no overlap in terms of period or topic between what you did for GCSE and what your college studies for A Level. It is the skills of putting together a historical argument and handling sources that will be useful, not familiar names or dates.

It may be that you are interested in studying history at A Level, but are unsure about the particular topics your chosen college offers. Sometimes some colleges may be able to offer other options – it is worth asking.

If you are planning to complete your A Levels in a year, History is a good subject choice. You will need to work hard, and accept that the course will be intensive, but for the right person a one-year course can be fun, and produce a very good grade.