Professional Development

Hello, welcome to the Inside Assessment video for GCSE and A-level History.

My name's Katie Hall and I'm the Head of Curriculum for History at AQA. Joining me is Keith Milne, who's a Senior Examiner for History at A-level and GCSE. Today we're going to be looking at the Inside Assessment video for History GCSE and A-level.

On the slide, you will see some of the factors that you will have discussed in validity and assessment in the previous videos you've watched. We'll be discussing these factors and how they apply to history GCSE and A-level today.

So, Keith, let's start by looking at the specification. How do we ensure there's a link between the specification and the content being assessed?

Keith Milne Well, the Assessment Objectives are the clear driver here. The Assessment Objectives identify what we think are the most important skills that students should be displaying in this particular subject and for each of the Assessment Objectives, we identify how we're going to assess those skills. Knowledge in itself is not really the key here; what we want is knowledge being used to help support those skills, which we've identified in the Assessment Objectives and so we then design questions to test those particular skills.

Katie Hall So how do we design questions to reflect Assessment Objectives?

Keith Milne Well, we identify in the specification which Assessment Objectives are more particular to particular questions. So, for example, in the GCSE paper one, we break down each of the questions and identify those Assessment Objectives or indeed combination of Assessment Objectives that we'll be looking at.

Katie Hall So we've decided what question types we're going to use. For the next question, how can we think about integrating knowledge with the assessment of skills?

Keith Milne Well, the mark scheme again is the driver here. We've really got two types of mark scheme. There’s the indicative content, which is the knowledge and the generic mark scheme, which is showing the skills.

If we look at this GCSE slide for paper one, it shows quite clearly the progression in those skills in the generic mark scheme. We use Levels of Response mark schemes as they are better suited to the more sort of open-ended response that we tend to see in history and allow us to differentiate between the skills and the knowledge much more clearly.

At the higher end of the mark schemes, we are looking for the good integration of those skills and knowledge together. It's effectively using knowledge to support the display of skills, whereas at the lower levels, what we're looking at is simply the recall of factual material.

Katie Hall So Keith, we thought about question types, let's think about how in those questions we give certain knowledge prompts to show what kind of content is being assessed.

Keith Milne Yeah, exactly right. We try and design questions that assist the student in their deployments of knowledge. So, if we have a look at this A-level question, the focus here is actually several fold. We've got Charles I; we've got political divisions, we've also got the date range 1629 to 1649 and, indeed, there might be some evaluation of his views of monarchy.

At AS level we do a similar thing where here we have a number of conceptual focuses, if you like, we've got parliamentary opposition and students are also having to determine whether that was effective or ineffective, perhaps with some criteria, along of course, with the date range, 1604 to 1629.

So, in all of those cases, what we're trying to do is give opportunity for the student to deploy their knowledge, in effective analysis and evaluation, essentially linking back again to those Assessment Objectives.

Katie Hall That's great. And if we turn our minds to GCSE assessment, what does this look like at GCSE?

Keith Milne Well, it's very similar at GCSE, but we break it down perhaps into more manageable chunks. So, if we have a look at that first question, which is account how the Spanish Armada was defeated, we're looking for slightly more than simply the relaying of information, we want the student to perhaps deploy second order concepts there, for example, linking factors together or talking about significance.

Even if we're asking for the student directly to explain the significance of a factor, we're expecting the student to make some sort of judgment and, therefore, in the lower tariff questions, for example, the ‘describe the two problems faced by the Germans during World War II’, simply relaying information there is not enough because the student needs to identify exactly what a problem might be.

And then of course we've got the ‘in what ways’ question, which perhaps is more similar to that idea of giving a very convincing judgment, but all of that links back to those Assessment Objectives we talked about at the start.

Katie Hall Thanks, Keith, that's really useful. Let's move on to look at a really important part of assessment at GCSE and A-level - ‘sources and interpretations’. How do we design assessments to look at sources and interpretations?

Keith Milne Well that's a really important question and, as with everything, we bring it back to the Assessment Objectives.

So, the clear phrase running throughout all of the Assessment Objectives, both at GCSE and at A-level is analysis and evaluation.

Katie Hall And what does that look like at A-level mark schemes?

Keith Milne Well, at the lower levels for A-level, what we're really aiming for is extraction of information. So, we're showing that the student has understood the interpretation in front of them. That's more than simply copying out the extract. That's perhaps identifying the key points that are relevant to the question asked, but it's still pretty straightforward. It's about the simple extraction of information, whereas at the top level, that's where we are driving that key phrase ‘analysis and evaluation’ and we're looking for the student to extract relevant bits of information in conjunction with their knowledge, in order to show an effective evaluation.

Katie Hall And how is this shown in the construction of the mark scheme for AO4 at GCSE?

Keith Milne Well, it's divided into smaller chunks. It's the same driver really looking for analysis and evaluation, but we've simply separated it out, but if you look at question three there, that's where the analysis and evaluation at GCSE exists; we simply build up to it.

Katie Hall And Keith, thinking about the analysis and evaluation of interpretations at GCSE, how is that shown in the construction of the mark scheme?

Keith Milne Well, the clear principle here is progression, so it's very similar actually to what I identified at A-level.

At the lower levels there's simple extraction, whereas at the higher end, we are looking for that analysis and evaluation and that's exemplified in the level descriptors for question three.

Katie Hall Now let's look at sources, Keith. In what way are these skills different for sources and is A-level more demanding?

Keith Milne Well, the crucial bit is analysis and evaluation and going back to those Assessment Objectives again. Now, certainly there is progression, but the progression is also seen within GCSE and A-level, and we identify that through the various level descriptors. The key here is we're aiming for evaluation, we're aiming for the student to deploy their knowledge in an effective way.

So, for sources, yes, we make them appropriate obviously to the age range for GCSE and A-level but the actual skill, the evaluation and the judgment, is common to both.

So, if you look at the A-level mark scheme, for example, right at the upper end, we're asking for the student to extract bits of those sources in order to support an argument, a judgement, if you like, about how valuable those sources are. Whereas at the lower end, we're just seeing if the student understands the source in front of them, and that might be by the simple extraction of relevant, but not evaluated material.

Katie Hall Thanks, Keith. And finally, how would you sum up how we construct assessments and ensure their validity?

Keith Milne Well the key driver, as I've perhaps identified through today's presentation, is the Assessment Objectives. What we are clearly focused on is the idea of how we assess those key skills, and we embed these within the mark schemes. So, at the higher levels, we're looking at the more developed skills and at the lower levels, we're trying to still credit the students that show perhaps a more undeveloped approach to those Assessment Objectives.

Knowledge and structuring of the answers are then used to, if you like, assist the student in showing the perfection of those particular skills.

Katie Hall Thanks, Keith.

Thanks for watching the Inside assessment video for history. We hope you found it useful and learned something about the construction of assessments. If you have any feedback, please let us know at history@aqa.org.uk.

Goodbye.