DISPATCH / YOUR STUDY SPACE
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DISPATCH / YOUR STUDY SPACE
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AQA / UK A-LEVEL / 7042
Understand the evidence. Explain the change. Build a judgement.
AQA History has two exams and a historical investigation. Each exam is 2 hours 30 minutes, worth 80 marks and 40% of the A-Level. The investigation contributes 20%.
These are selected study frameworks and original practice prompts, not a complete textbook. Confirm your entry options with your teacher. The short 4–20-mark formats elsewhere on Dispatch belong to Economics, not AQA History.
1C · Breadth study
Trace changes in royal authority, government, religion, foreign relations and society across the dynasty. Compare reigns as well as explaining individual events.
Organise evidence on royal government, finance, dynastic security and resistance. Distinguish a ruler’s intended policy from how effectively it worked.
Record a dated event, what it demonstrates and a limitation. Compare it with one piece of contrasting evidence from your lesson notes.
How would you distinguish financial strength from political security?
Connect ministers, Parliament and royal supremacy. Compare political motives with religious ideas, and investigate how change affected different groups.
Record a dated event, what it demonstrates and a limitation. Compare it with one piece of contrasting evidence from your lesson notes.
What evidence would test whether religious change strengthened royal power?
Compare religious policy, succession, rebellion and the limits of government. Test continuity against change instead of assuming every new monarch transformed the country.
Record a dated event, what it demonstrates and a limitation. Compare it with one piece of contrasting evidence from your lesson notes.
Build a comparison across two reigns using the same criteria.
2O · Depth study
Investigate the strengths and weaknesses of Weimar democracy, the transition to dictatorship and the operation and impact of Nazi rule.
Separate constitutional arrangements from economic pressures and political choices. Compare recovery with continuing vulnerability; avoid treating the Republic’s collapse as inevitable.
Record a dated event, what it demonstrates and a limitation. Compare it with one piece of contrasting evidence from your lesson notes.
Which evidence would distinguish recovery from lasting stability?
Explain how economic crisis, party support and elite decisions interacted. Distinguish Hitler’s appointment from the subsequent destruction of democratic institutions.
Record a dated event, what it demonstrates and a limitation. Compare it with one piece of contrasting evidence from your lesson notes.
Rank two causes by explaining how each changed political outcomes.
Study coercion, propaganda, social and economic policy, racial persecution and wartime radicalisation. Consider different experiences and the limits of opposition using precise historical evidence.
Record a dated event, what it demonstrates and a limitation. Compare it with one piece of contrasting evidence from your lesson notes.
What can a source reveal about policy, and what can it show about its actual impact?
For sources, evaluate content and provenance in context. For interpretations, test the historian’s argument against contextual knowledge. These require different approaches.
AQA assessment guidance ↗COMING SOON
Year 13 USA resources will be added once the period and course requirements are confirmed.
Official source links checked 25 September 2026. Dispatch is independent of AQA.