If any of you are feeling that the A level history markschemes don’t make much sense you will draw consideable comfort from John Carroll’s article.
For many years I have been intensely frustrated with the way A level examiners ask students to avoid narrative in favour of analysis and then cram their markscheme full of factual content and only superficial generic analysis.
I had hoped that the recent A level reforms would have addressed this issue. Alas, it prevails and is alive and kicking in all markschemes that cross my desk. Pity the poor student who is being continually asked to write analytically and then comes across these wretched markschemes which are littered with narrative detail and only the most basic attempt to oversimplify and pre-ordain the sort of analysis they are looking for.
