Which History GCSE to choose? Getting your head around 2015 changes (9-1)

If you want to get straight to the documents, they are a the bottom of this post.

To be fair, I probably need to get more of a life, but ever since the new GCSE draft specifications for history were published, I have been dying to compare them and see which I like best. Now I need to declare some personal interest before I begin - I am currently involved in writing for the America unit of the OCR B specification. However I have come at this with a genuinely open mind because what I think is good history, and what I think might be best for the students at my school are two connected but different things! 

What I am presenting here therefore is a summary of each of the specifications and its means of assessment. The comments are meant to help me quickly compare and contrast the options and see which might be most appropriate. I have not compared every unit as there are some I know we won't do, however the basic structure of most of the units is the same. Please feel free to let me have any comments.

Read More