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Three parts of AQA A-Level History test skills beyond the essay: the primary-source question on Paper 2 (Section A, AO2), the interpretations question on Paper 1 (Section A, AO3), and the NEA (Non-Examined Assessment), which braids AO1, AO2 and AO3 into a single extended investigation. Each tests a distinct kind of evidence-handling: weighing what a contemporary tells us, weighing what a historian argues, and sustaining your own research over time. This lesson covers all three — first the AO2 source question, then the AO3 interpretations question, then the NEA.
Key Principle: Evidence questions are never comprehension exercises. Whether the stimulus is a Stalin speech or a Gaddis extract, the marks reward evaluation in context — what can a historian legitimately draw from this, and how far does it stand up against what we know? Reproduce, and you stall in the lower bands; evaluate, and you climb.
The Paper 2 Section A source question — the only place in the examinations where AO2 is assessed — is phrased consistently:
"With reference to these sources and your understanding of the historical context, assess the value of these three sources to a historian studying [topic]."
It is worth 30 marks and you should spend roughly 55 minutes on it, including reading time. You are given three sources (Source A, B and C — usually contemporary primary material of 150–250 words each). These are typically:
| Typical mix | Example |
|---|---|
| Three contemporary documents of differing types | An official dispatch, a private diary entry, and a public speech from the same period |
| Sources from differing standpoints | A supporter's account, a critic's account, and an "official" account of the same event |
| Differing purposes | A document meant to record, one meant to persuade, and one meant to justify |
All three sources are contemporary primary sources — material created during, or very close to, the events. (Historians' interpretations belong to the other paper: that is the Paper 1 AO3 question covered in Part 2 below.)
This is the most important distinction in source analysis at A-Level. The question does NOT ask:
It DOES ask: "How useful is this source to a historian studying [the specified topic]?"
A source can be biased AND valuable. A propaganda poster is obviously not a neutral account of events, but it tells a historian a great deal about what a regime wanted people to believe, how it constructed its message, and what values it appealed to.
Key Principle: Value = what a historian can learn from the source, not whether it tells "the truth."
When analysing any source, consider four dimensions:
| What to Do | What to Avoid |
|---|---|
| Identify the key claims, arguments, or information in the source | Simply paraphrasing or copying out the source |
| Select the most relevant points for the specified topic | Quoting long passages without analysis |
| Note what the source emphasises | Ignoring parts of the source that do not fit your argument |
| Note what the source omits (if you know from contextual knowledge) | Treating omission as evidence of dishonesty without further analysis |
Example: If a source is a speech by Stalin defending collectivisation, the content includes his arguments (modernisation of agriculture, defeating kulaks, building socialism) — but you should also note what he omits (the famine, forced deportations, resistance from peasants).
Provenance is the context of the source's creation. It is essential for evaluating value.
| Factor | Questions to Ask |
|---|---|
| Author | Who created the source? What was their position or role? What access did they have to information? What were their sympathies or allegiances? |
| Date | When was the source created? Was it during, immediately after, or long after the events it describes? Does the date affect the author's perspective? |
| Purpose | Why was the source created? To inform, persuade, justify, criticise, entertain, record? |
| Audience | Who was the intended audience? The public, a private individual, a government, posterity? |
| Type | What kind of source is it? A speech, letter, diary, official report, memoir, newspaper article? Each type has characteristic strengths and limitations |
Example analysis of provenance:
Source A is a letter from Thomas Cromwell to Henry VIII, dated March 1536, reporting on the progress of the dissolution of the monasteries. As Henry's chief minister and the architect of the dissolution policy, Cromwell had a vested interest in presenting the process as successful and the monasteries as corrupt. The letter is addressed to the king, meaning Cromwell would have been careful to tell Henry what he wanted to hear. This limits the source's value as an objective account of monastic life but makes it extremely valuable for understanding how the dissolution was managed politically and how Cromwell constructed his case for the policy.
This is where your own historical knowledge becomes essential. The mark scheme explicitly rewards candidates who use "understanding of the historical context" to assess the sources.
| How to Use Contextual Knowledge | Example |
|---|---|
| Confirm what the source says | "Source A's claim that monasteries were corrupt is supported by the evidence of the Valor Ecclesiasticus (1535), which revealed significant financial irregularities in some smaller houses" |
| Challenge what the source says | "However, Cromwell's commissioners have been criticised by historians such as Eamon Duffy for fabricating or exaggerating evidence of corruption to justify dissolution" |
| Fill gaps the source leaves | "Source A does not mention the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536), the largest popular rebellion of Henry VIII's reign, which demonstrated significant opposition to the dissolution" |
| Explain why the source says what it does | "Cromwell's positive tone can be explained by his political position: as the minister responsible for the dissolution, he could not afford to report failure to the king" |
Key Point: Contextual knowledge is what separates a good source answer from a mediocre one. You must go beyond what is in the sources themselves.
Every source has both limitations and strengths. The examiner wants you to identify both — not just one.
| Limitations | Strengths |
|---|---|
| Bias or partisanship | Reveals the perspective of a particular group or individual |
| Limited perspective (the author can only see their own viewpoint) | Provides a first-hand account from someone involved in events |
| Purpose may distort content (e.g., propaganda) | Purpose tells us about the priorities and values of the creator |
| May be inaccurate or incomplete | Even inaccuracies can be revealing (why did the author get this wrong?) |
| May represent only one social group, region, or viewpoint | Provides evidence of the views and experiences of that group |
With three sources and 30 marks, the cleanest structure is one substantial paragraph per source plus a closing synthesis. Treat each source in turn — content, provenance, contextual evaluation, value — rather than running a feature (e.g. "all the authors") across all three at once, which fragments the analysis.
Paragraph 1: Source A — what it says that bears on the enquiry; who produced it, when, why and for whom; how your contextual knowledge confirms, challenges or extends it; and therefore its value for studying the topic.
Paragraph 2: Source B — the same disciplined sequence (content → provenance → context → value).
Paragraph 3: Source C — the same again, drawing out what this source adds that the others do not.
Paragraph 4: Overall judgement — how the three relate (do they corroborate, conflict, or illuminate different facets?); what a historian gains from having all three together; what gaps remain; and a final verdict on their combined value for the stated enquiry.
Exam Tip: Do not write a separate introduction. Jump straight into Source A. With ~55 minutes for 30 marks across three sources, preamble is a luxury you cannot afford — aim for roughly 15 minutes per source plus a tight closing synthesis.
The mark scheme rewards candidates who relate the sources to each other rather than treating them in isolation. Key approaches:
| Relationship | What to Say |
|---|---|
| Corroboration | "Sources A and C both indicate... and their agreement, despite differing standpoints, strengthens the evidence that..." |
| Disagreement | "Source B claims..., yet Source A implies the opposite; this divergence reveals how contested [topic] was among contemporaries" |
| Complementary | "Source A documents [one facet] while Source C illuminates [another]; together the three offer a fuller picture than any one alone" |
| Differing standpoints | "Source A speaks from [position], B from [another], C from [a third]; read across, they map the spread of contemporary opinion on [topic]" |
| Mistake | Why It's Wrong | What to Do Instead |
|---|---|---|
| "This source is biased, so it is not useful" | Bias does not destroy value; a partisan source reveals the attitudes and intentions of its author | Explain what the partisanship reveals and how it bears on value for the specific enquiry |
| Listing provenance without analysis | "The source was written by X in Y" — this is description, not evaluation | Explain HOW the provenance affects the source's value |
| Neglecting one of the three sources | You must engage all three substantively to reach the upper levels | Allocate roughly equal time and depth to each source |
| Not using contextual knowledge | The mark scheme explicitly requires "understanding of the historical context" | Use your own knowledge to confirm, challenge, or extend each source |
| Treating the question as comprehension | Simply explaining what the sources say is not enough | EVALUATE — assess value, do not merely describe content |
| Ranking sources by reliability | The question asks for value, not a reliability league table | Focus on what each source offers a historian, then synthesise |
Enquiry: the value of these sources to a historian studying Stalin's collectivisation of agriculture, 1929–1933. Source A is an extract from a 1930 Pravda editorial praising the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class".
Mid-band extract: Source A is a Pravda editorial from 1930. It says the kulaks should be liquidated. This is biased because Pravda was the Communist Party newspaper, so it only gives the government's view and is not reliable about what really happened in the countryside.
Examiner-style commentary: This describes the source and then dismisses it for "bias" — the classic AO2 error. It does not ask what a historian could learn. It stalls in the lower-middle bands because it treats partisanship as a reason to discount, not to interpret.
Stronger extract: As the official Party newspaper, Source A is valuable evidence of how the regime publicly justified collectivisation. Its call to "liquidate the kulaks as a class" shows that the campaign was framed not as economic reform but as class war, which helps explain the ferocity with which it was pursued. A historian would treat its triumphant tone with care, since it conceals the resistance and disruption that contextual knowledge confirms.
Examiner-style commentary: Now provenance is turned into value — the source reveals the regime's framing — and contextual knowledge is brought in. This is solid Level 4 work; the evaluation could be sharper still on what the source's silences imply.
Top-band extract: Source A's worth lies precisely in its function as public justification. Appearing in Pravda in 1930, at the height of the "dekulakisation" drive, it is invaluable evidence of how the leadership legitimised coercion to a mass readership: by recasting prosperous peasants as a hostile "class" to be eliminated, it licensed the violence that drove perhaps five million from their land. Its silences are as telling as its claims — the absence of any reference to the catastrophic fall in grain output, or to the famine already gathering in Ukraine, marks the limit of its value for the consequences of the policy, even as it remains a first-class window onto the regime's intentions.
Examiner-style commentary: This reaches the top band: it locates the source precisely (1930, dekulakisation), shows what a historian gains (the mechanics of legitimisation) and what its silences withhold (output collapse, famine), and discriminates between value-for-intentions and value-for-consequences. Provenance, content and context are fused into a genuine evaluation of value.
Key Point: Across the three bands the facts barely change — what changes is the handling. The top-band answer never asks "is this true?"; it asks "what can a historian legitimately draw from this, and where does it stop being useful?" That question is the whole of AO2.
Paper 1 Section A tests AO3 — the analysis and evaluation of how historians have interpreted the past. You are given three extracts (Extract A, B and C) of historians' writing, each advancing an argument about the same broad issue, and asked:
"Using your understanding of the historical context and your own knowledge, assess the strengths and limitations of these three extracts in relation to [the issue]."
It is worth 30 marks and, like the Paper 2 source question, deserves roughly 55 minutes. The crucial difference from AO2 is what you evaluate: not the value of contemporary evidence, but the persuasiveness of a historical argument.
| It IS | It Is NOT |
|---|---|
| An evaluation of each historian's argument against the historical record | A summary of what each extract says |
| A judgement on where each interpretation is convincing or vulnerable | A verdict on which historian is "the right one" |
| Grounded in your own contextual knowledge of the period | A discussion of the historian's nationality, gender or the decade they wrote in (rarely the point) |
| Comparative — the three extracts are weighed against each other | Three isolated mini-essays with no synthesis |
Key Warning: The dominant error is paraphrase — re-telling each extract instead of evaluating it. Provenance reasoning, so central to AO2, is largely irrelevant here: a historian's argument stands or falls on the evidence and logic it rests on, which you test with your own knowledge — not on who the historian was.
For each extract, do three things:
Then synthesise: which extract offers the most convincing interpretation overall, and why?
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