A return to normalcy? What do the 2024 GCSE History exam results reveal?

[NB. this blog was updated with Q6&7 on 25 August]

Ah, who doesn't love that famously dull election slogan from Warren G Harding? Still it won him the Presidency, so it'll do for me,

It has been a long time since I posted a blog here! This is my endeavour to get my brain back into work mode after the summer break. I will hopefully be giving some more updates on the SHP Curriculum PATHS project here soon. More on that here: Curriculum PATHS - Schools History Project

If you have followed my blog in the past you may be aware that I did a similar analysis back when the current GCSEs were first examined back in 2018, and again in 2019. The aim was to look at how the new exams compared to the old ones and the potential impact of any changes. You an find it HERE. We then had a long break due to Covid and the ongoing impacts on the awarding of exams.

Today I want to revisit some of the questions from 2018 and look to explore what this year's GCSE History results might reveal about some of the main history specifications on offer for GCSE in England.

I will be addressing the following questions. Please do scroll down to what interests you. I have included my short takeaway answer as well as a longer analysis.

1. Are there any noticeable trends in entry numbers?
2. How do this year’s results stack up against the pre-Covid years?
3. Which boards got the best results?
4. Which exams were the most and least accessible?
5. Which units were the most and least accessible?
6. Are there any historic trends with accessibility?
7. What made papers harder or easier?

As ever, I am grateful for any comments or questions you might have, and am happy to chat further about any of this. These days you can find me over at Bluesky @apf102.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Full disclosure: as an SHP Fellow, I am of course connected with the OCR History B (SHP) specification. That said, I and the SHP Fellows do not set the papers, this is done by OCR. The aim here (as you will hopefully see) is to offer an honest analysis of the results for HoDs and others interested in exploring the bigger picture of the history exams over the past few years.

Finally, I want to say a huge thank you to AQA who put all their data in XLS format, making this job infinitely easier!!

Read on for more...
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