The GCSE Papers GCSE History provides opportunities to study Hitler’s dictatorship, the USA in the Roaring Twenties, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Northern Ireland’s civil unrest, or the USA’s response to 9/11.
In our website GCSE Papers you can consider the relevance of the past and gain a deeper understanding of the present. You can learn to balance factual content with historical skills.
You can have an opportunity to analyse and evaluate historical sources, and interpretations of the past on our website.
GCSE Papers help you to develop transferable skills which are useful for further study by including research, organising information, analysing evidence, and developing a coherent argument.
We teach well-established periods of history as well as some exciting new topics, built on the skills and topics learned at Key Stage 3.
The GCSE History content comprises the following elements:
- one period study
- one thematic study
- one wider world depth study
- one British depth study including the historic environment.
Paper 1: Understanding the modern world
Section A: Period studies
Choose any one of the following:
- AA America, 1840–1895: Expansion and consolidation
- AB Germany, 1890–1945: Democracy and dictatorship
- AC Russia, 1894–1945: Stardom and communism
- AD America, 1920–1973: Opportunity and inequality
Section B: Wider world depth studies
Choose any one of the following:
- BA Conflict and tension: The First World War, 1894–1918
- BB Conflict and tension: The inter-war years, 1918–1939
- BC Conflict and tension between East and West, 1945–1972
- BD Conflict and tension in Asia, 1950–1975
- BE Conflict and tension in the Gulf and Afghanistan, 1990–2009
Paper 2: Shaping the nation
Section A: Thematic studies
Choose any one of the following:
- AA Britain: Health and the people: c1000 to the present day
- AB Britain: Power and the people: c1170 to the present day
- AC Britain: Migration, empires and the people: c790 to the present day
Section B: British depth studies including the historic environment
Choose any one of the following:
- BA Norman England, c1066–c1100
- BB Medieval England: the reign of Edward I, 1272–1307
- BC Elizabethan England, c1568–1603
- BD Restoration England, 1660–1685