A-Level History Coursework: 8 Traps Students Fall Into (and 8 Ways to Avoid Them)

Writing an extended piece of coursework, or non-examined assessment (NEA) as part of A-Level History is no easy task. In fact, it's probably the trickiest single thing A-Level History students have to do. If students are to succeed, they need to know what to look out for. So do we, as their teachers!

Here are 8 of the most common traps that I've seen our students fall into over the past few years and 8 ways to avoid them.

                        

(The accompanying examples are all hypothetical and are meant to illustrate good practice to students only. They are not directly relevant in context to our NEA topic of the Crusades.)

This post is available as a downloadable document here.

Responding to SHP 2025: Part 2, Claire Holliss on Stories at A-Level

The 2025 Schools History Project (SHP) conference was, as ever, a highlight of the teaching year and a stimulus for all sorts of thoughts.

Inevitably, the best workshops at such an event are those that leave you with more (interesting) questions than answers.

In these two posts (including my last one, on Arthur Chapman’s presentation on stories and narratives), I’m going to try to formulate some coherent thoughts in relation to two really excellent sessions in particular, both of which sent me away with a number of very interesting questions. The second post, here, discusses Claire Holliss’ workshop on stories at KS5.

 

Sometimes, new directions in pedagogy develop their own momentum and give rise to new orthodoxies and (near-)universally accepted wisdom. When this happens, it’s important to take a step back and evaluate the evidence to establish how sound that wisdom actually is.

This is what I understood Claire Holliss’ fantastic SHP 2025 workshop to be honing in on.

In her very clear-minded, critical, but open discussion of using stories at KS5, Claire gave a well-deserved nod towards some very interesting and valuable work done on integrating stories into classroom teaching. She then asked how far doing so would actually benefit teaching History at KS5.

Claire’s work links to an ongoing research project, involving the selection and use of specific stories in her own teaching. This was also of interest to me, as our department has also been starting to develop stories in our own KS5 teaching of Russian and Soviet History (I’ll explore this a bit below).

Responding to SHP 2025: Part 1, Arthur Chapman on Narratives

The 2025 Schools History Project (SHP) conference was, as ever, a highlight of the teaching year and a stimulus for all sorts of thoughts.

Inevitably, the best workshops at such an event are those that leave you with more (interesting) questions than answers.

In the following two posts, I’m going to try to formulate some coherent thoughts in relation to two really excellent sessions in particular, both of which sent me away with a number of very interesting questions. The first post, here, discusses Arthur Chapman’s workshop on stories and narratives.

What is a story? This deceptively tricky question lay at the heart of Arthur Chapman’s workshop.

Here, I want to pick up on one issue in particular which was discussed during that workshop. It’s an issue which has prompted a number of very interesting questions and got me thinking again about stories, narratives, and arguments.

That issue is: narratives as historical interpretation.

Language and Substantive Concepts: Part 2 – Speaking in Tongues

This is the second of a three-part post focusing on what I term, following Caroline Coffin, the “language of history” and substantive concepts.

After the first post set out a broad theoretical framework, this post aims to set out an approach to teaching a specific sub-category of substantive concepts: foreign-language terms.

I’ll be presenting on this topic with colleagues at the upcoming Schools History Project (SHP) conference in Leeds in July 2025, so this is also a first attempt to set out and develop a broad methodological approach to this work.

Questions, comments, and criticisms are very much welcome!

 

Language and Substantive Concepts: Part 1 – Weighty Conceptual Terms

This is the first of a three-part post focusing on what I term, following Caroline Coffin, the “language of history” and substantive concepts.

It aims to set out an approach to teaching substantive concepts by explicitly engaging with the linguistic structures of the historical discipline. I’ll be presenting on this topic with colleagues at the upcoming Schools History Project (SHP) conference in Leeds in July 2025, so this is also a first attempt to set out and develop a broad methodological approach to this work.

Questions, comments, and criticisms are very much welcome!

The Power of the Thesis, Part 2: Unlocking Historical Interpretations

In a post last week, I made that case that developing a thesis – one central line of argument – is crucial for students’ own writing at KS5.

Here, I’d like to pick up the idea of a thesis as a central line of argument to suggest how it can help students understand other people’s writing, in particular historians’ interpretations. I’ll make the case that, when faced with a historian’s interpretation of the past, students should focus on finding a central argument, and that, further, doing so is actually vital to them understanding that historian’s interpretation.

This post relates particularly to the treatment of interpretations in the AQA A-Level History Paper 1; but I hope the ideas it raises might be of some use to teachers teaching other exam board specifications and even at different key stages.

The Power of the Thesis, Part 1: Constructing Arguments in A-Level Essays

What is the point of an essay?

Over the past few years, I’ve asked A-Level students this question repeatedly before beginning to tackle exam skills, and received a variety of answers. They range from the plausible but vague (“to make a point”), to the bland or directionless (“to answer a question”, “to show what I know about…”) to the outright mercenary (“to pass exams”).

In fact, there is only one point to an essay. To make and test an argument.

The clue is in the name, even if we don’t know it. Etymologically, the noun “essay”, originating from the French essai, means “trial, attempt, endeavour”, as well as “short, discursive literary composition”. “Essay” also exists as a verb, meaning “to put to proof, test the mettle of”.

Given that this is the case, the most important part of any essay must be the thesis.