GCSE History past papers, marked against the real criteria

Seven papers in the AQA, Edexcel and OCR formats, forty written questions, each with the level criteria beside it. You write the answer in full; it is marked the way an examiner marks it — placed in a band, with the reason it sits there and what would have moved it up.

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What "marked against the criteria" actually means

History is not marked by ticking points off a list. Most of a History paper is marked by level: the examiner reads the whole answer, decides which band it belongs in, and the band is decided by what the answer does, not by how much of it is true. A pupil can write a page of accurate history and stop in the middle band.

Question. Write an account of how Hitler consolidated his power in Germany in the years 1933–34. (8 marks, in the style of the AQA period study)

A common answer, with nothing wrong in it:

The Reichstag Fire happened in February 1933 and a communist was blamed for it. Then Hitler passed the Enabling Act in March 1933. Trade unions were banned in May and the other political parties were banned in July. In June 1934 there was the Night of the Long Knives and Röhm was killed. Then Hindenburg died in August 1934 and Hitler made himself Führer.

✓

Knowledge — every event is relevant, correctly dated and in the right order. Earned. This is what carries the answer into the middle band, and it is as far as it goes.

✗

The link from the fire to the Enabling Act — not earned. The events are joined by the word "then". The decree issued the day after the fire suspended civil liberties, so communist deputies were in prison or in hiding when the Enabling Act was voted on a month later — part of how a measure needing a two-thirds majority got one. That sentence is the difference between describing and explaining.

✗

The link from the purge to the Führer title — not earned. Nothing here says why the Night of the Long Knives happened when it did. The army's generals distrusted the SA and Röhm wanted to absorb the army into it; destroying the SA leadership in June bought their support, so when Hindenburg died a month later the army swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler instead of resisting a chancellor who had just taken the president's powers as well.

Middle band, for an answer in which every fact is correct. The pupil revised a sequence of events and reproduced the sequence. Here the sequence is the raw material and the marks are in the joins — which a model answer cannot teach you, because it shows you a finished argument rather than what your answer did.

The same shape repeats across the paper. "Explain why" wants reasons that act on each other, not reasons in a list. A sixteen-mark "how far do you agree" wants the named factor weighed against others and a decision at the end: an answer that explains three factors well and never says which mattered most has answered a different question.

Utility is about where a source came from

Source questions — Edexcel's "how useful are Sources A and B for an enquiry into…", AQA's eight-mark utility question — are lost the same way every summer: the pupil summarises what the source says, adds that it is useful because it tells us a lot, and finishes by calling it biased.

Usefulness is judged against the enquiry named in the question, and it is judged on the nature, origin and purpose of the source at least as much as on its content. A piece of government propaganda is close to worthless as evidence of what conditions were really like and is excellent evidence of what the government wanted people to believe — same source, two enquiries, opposite verdicts. "Biased" is not an answer; every source was made by somebody, for a reason, and the reason is the thing to write about. Nor is "written at the time" automatically a virtue: an eyewitness sees one trench, one street, one ward.

Edexcel adds a four-mark question asking how you would follow a source up: a detail from it, a question that detail raises, and a type of source that could answer it. The marks depend on the three fitting together, and they are regularly thrown away by naming a detail and then asking something unconnected to it.

Interpretations are not sources

An interpretation is a historian arguing a case, and the question is never whether it is true. It is how convincing the argument is, or how far you agree. Two historians can read the same evidence and differ because they selected differently, asked different questions, or wrote in different decades — disagreement between them is normal, not a sign that one is lying.

The answer has to engage with what the passage actually claims, in its own words, then use specific knowledge both to support it and to qualify it before reaching a judgement. Two things score badly: a good general essay on the topic in which the passage is mentioned once and ignored, and the passage summarised in different words with "this is convincing" at the end.

Find out which options you were entered for

Two pupils can both be taking GCSE History and share almost no content. AQA pairs a period study with a wider world depth study on one paper, and a thematic study with a British depth study on the other; Edexcel spreads a thematic study and its historic environment, a period study and British depth, and a modern depth study across three papers; OCR runs two separate suites with different topics, different question stems and different marks per question. Revising Elizabethan England when the school entered Norman England is not a small mistake.

The tariffs matter as much as the topics, because they tell you the shape of the answer. A four-mark "describe two features" question wants two features with a detail each and nothing more — explaining why they mattered earns nothing there. An eight-mark question and a sixteen-mark one on the same topic are different tasks, not the same task at different lengths. And on at least one of your papers a few marks go for spelling, punctuation, grammar and specialist terms, which is the one place where getting Reichstag, Kristallnacht, recusant or laissez-faire down correctly is worth something in itself. Which paper that is depends on your board.

The papers

Board	Year	Paper	Tier	Questions
AQA	2022	History	format practice	6
AQA	2023	History	format practice	6
AQA	2024	History	format practice	5
Edexcel	2023	History	format practice	7
Edexcel	2024	History	format practice	6
OCR	2023	History	format practice	5
OCR	2024	History	format practice	5

40 questions across 7 papers, each with its own criteria. Everything here is written in the boards' own format and judged against their published criteria; the papers themselves belong to the boards and are not reproduced here.

Try it on your own answer

Open a paper, write what you would have written in the exam, including the wrong bits, and read what comes back. It is free to start and does not ask for a card.

Open GCSE History

The other subjects

Twenty-three in one place, aligned to AQA, Edexcel and OCR.

Maths Biology Chemistry Physics English Geography Computer Science Business Psychology Sociology Economics Statistics Citizenship Media Studies