Course and Revision Planning

Abstract

In planning out your course and revision, you need to know what GCSE Modern World History is about. The guidelines for your course are laid down in the Examining Group’s syllabus, and details of what to do can be worked out from old examination papers. What do the GCSE examiners want from you? Each syllabus has an almost identical set of Aims and Assessment Objectives. The Aims lay down in general terms what you should get out of the course, while the Assessment Objectives give a detailed account of what you will be tested upon. The Assessment Objectives are what the examiners have been told to use when drawing up your examination papers. The four Assessment Objectives read:

• 1. To recall, evaluate and select knowledge relevant to the context and to deploy it in a clear and coherent form.

• 2. To make use of and understand the concepts of cause and consequence, continuity and change, similarity and difference.

• 3. To show an ability to look at events and issues from the perspective of people in the past.

• 4. To show the skills necessary to study a wide variety of historical evidence, which should include both primary and secondary written sources, statistical and visual material, artefacts, textbooks and orally transmitted information:

  • (i) By comprehending and extracting information from it.

  • (ii) By interpreting and evaluating it — distinguishing between fact, opinion and judgement; pointing to deficiencies in the material as evidence, such as gaps and inconsistencies; detecting bias.

  • (iii) By comparing various types of historical evidence and reaching conclusions based on this comparison. (GCSE National Criteria for History — Assessment Objectives)