How to Get an A in A-Level History: 3 Essay Skills History Examiners Reward

After marking thousands of A-Level History scripts over the past few years, I can say this: the gap between an A or B and an A* is almost never about knowledge. Students at the top know the content. They've revised the same textbooks and can recall the same facts.

But very few scripts show what A Level examiners are actually rewarding at the highest level — sustained judgement, precise analytical control, and disciplined evaluation running through the whole essay. My students who reach A* aren't writing more. They're thinking more carefully — and more consistently — about how they argue. So here are the three things that separate the best history scripts from the rest. If this helped, please help share these tips with your fellow history classmates!

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1. How to write a valid criteria that actually measure - the do's and don't.

2. How to write judgements to get the very top marks for history

3. The difference between evaluation and description

First things first. Often, your criteria aren't criteria — and you bet your history teacher knows it.

For A-Level History specifically, the first thing I'd like to emphasise is that a clear criterion is needed throughout your essay, as this is essential for making sustained judgement and reaching A* level analysis.

So, what is the common mistake I observe?

Many students write something like this in their introduction:

"I will use the criteria of the economy, society, and politics to judge which factor was most significant."

This is fundamentally wrong for history. You have not identified criteria at all. You have simply listed the topics you plan to write about. The word "criteria" has been used, but its meaning has been ignored entirely. This is one of the most common — and most costly — errors I see day after day in A-Level History essays.

So what actually counted as a "Criteria"?

A criterion is a measuring stick — a standard or benchmark you apply across all your factors to decide which one wins.

Think of it like judging a competition. If you are deciding which athlete is the greatest, you do not say:

"My criteria are Usain Bolt, Muhammad Ali, and Serena Williams."

Those are the contestants, not the criteria. Your actual criteria might be:

• Dominance — how far ahead of their rivals were they?

• Longevity — how long did their impact last?

• Scale — how many people were affected by what they achieved?

You then apply those standards to each athlete and reach a judgement. History essays work in exactly the same way.

When asked how significant a cause, event, or individual was, your criteria should be abstract measuring benchmarks, such as:

You do not need all of these. Typically, two well-chosen criteria, clearly defined and consistently applied, is what the top mark band rewards.

A Side-by-Side Comparison

Weak Introduction (Incorrect Use of "Criteria")

"To judge the most significant cause of World War One, I will use the criteria of nationalism, militarism, and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. I will examine each factor and decide which was most important."

Nationalism, militarism, and the assassination are the factors — the very things being judged. No measuring standard has been established. The examiner has no idea what "significant" means to this student.

Strong Introduction (Correct Use of Criteria)

"To judge significance, I will use two criteria: scale — meaning how many nations and people were directly drawn into conflict as a result — and turning point, meaning whether the factor fundamentally altered the course of events or merely accelerated what was already inevitable. Applying these standards, I will argue that the alliance system was the most significant cause, because it transformed a regional dispute into a continental war and made escalation structurally unavoidable, whereas the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, though dramatic, was a trigger that required the alliance system to already be in place in order to have any large-scale consequence."

What has gone right

• Two named, defined criteria (scale; turning point)

• The criteria are abstract benchmarks, not topics

• The criteria are applied immediately to support a clear judgement

• The student has used the criteria to explain why one factor outranks another — which is the entire point

The Golden Rule

Criteria are not what you discuss. They are how you judge.

Every time you use the word "criteria" in an essay, ask yourself: "Could I apply this standard to every factor I'm comparing?" If the answer is no — if it only applies to one factor — it is not a criterion. It is just a topic.

Before starting your introduction, answer these two questions:

1. What is my judgement? (Which factor/event/individual was most significant?)

2. By what standard am I measuring? (Scale? Duration? Depth of impact? Turning point?)

If you can answer question 2 clearly, in abstract terms that apply to all the factors you will discuss, you have your criteria. Write those down first — then build your argument around them.

Next, Let's Talk Judgements. How to Write Strong Judgements in History Essays

I can tell you this; the judgement is where most of my history students lose marks they should never have lost. The content is often there. The knowledge is solid. But the Judgements lets them down — and it costs them dearly. You may have learnt this at your O Level or GCSE, but haven't understood it well so let me explain it clearly.

I'll call it the tree deadly sins of weak judgements

The first Sin is the "Repeat the Question" Conclusion and Introductions. This is the most common mistake I see. The student simply echoes the wording of the question back at me as if that counts as an answer.

Example question: "To what extent was Hitler's foreign policy the main cause of the Second World War?"

The student then writes the following.

"In conclusion, this essay has discussed whether Hitler's foreign policy was the main cause of the Second World War. There were many causes of the war and historians disagree about which was most important."

You have told me nothing. You have not answered the question. You have described what an essay does, not what you think. This will not reach the higher mark bands — full stop.

The second sin is the "Sitting on the Fence" Conclusion and introduction.

The student is so afraid of being wrong that they refuse to commit to any position.

"In conclusion, Hitler's foreign policy was an important cause of the war, but so were the appeasement policies of Britain and France, the weaknesses of the Treaty of Versailles, and the Great Depression. All of these factors played a role."

This is a list, not a judgement. You have given me a shopping receipt of causes with no weighing, no hierarchy, no argument. Every single factor is treated as equally important — which means you have not done the intellectual work of a historian.

the third sin is the "Last Minute U-Turn" conclusion. The student argues one thing throughout the entire essay, then panics in the conclusion and suddenly agrees with everything.

"Throughout this essay I have argued that appeasement was more significant than Hitler's foreign policy. However, in conclusion, Hitler's foreign policy was actually the main cause, and appeasement was also very important, and so was the Treaty of Versailles..."

Your line of argument has collapsed. A sustained judgement must run like a spine through your entire essay — from introduction to conclusion. If it changes at the last moment for no reason, it signals you were never really in control of your argument.

A strong judgement is sustained, meaning to say the argument in your introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion all point in the same direction

Watch How This Works

The Question: "To what extent was Hitler's foreign policy the main cause of the Second World War?"

Strong Introduction (Setting Out Your Argument)

While Hitler's foreign policy was undeniably the most immediate and direct cause of the Second World War — providing both the aggression and the ideological drive that made conflict inevitable — it was only able to succeed because of the permissive environment created by the failed policy of appeasement and the structural weaknesses left by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler's foreign policy was therefore the primary cause, but it functioned as a trigger igniting a powder keg that European diplomacy had spent two decades building.

Notice: The student has made a clear judgement immediately. They have acknowledged complexity — yes, other factors matter — but they have ranked the factors and explained the relationship between them. The examiner knows exactly where this essay is going.

How This Carries Through the Body

Each paragraph now has a purpose. When the student writes about appeasement, they don't just describe it — they explain how it enabled Hitler's foreign policy. When they write about the Treaty of Versailles, they explain how it created the conditions Hitler exploited.

Every paragraph is quietly saying: "This factor matters — but here is why Hitler's foreign policy still sits above it."

This is what examiners mean by a sustained argument.

Strong Conclusion (Finalising the Debate)

In conclusion, Hitler's foreign policy remains the primary cause of the Second World War because without his deliberate, calculated aggression — from the remilitarisation of the Rhineland to the invasion of Poland — war would not have occurred when and how it did. The Treaty of Versailles created resentment and instability, and appeasement fatally miscalculated Hitler's intentions, but neither factor was sufficient on its own to produce war. It was Hitler's ideological commitment to Lebensraum and his willingness to use military force that transformed European tension into global conflict. Appeasement and Versailles are therefore best understood as enabling conditions, not primary causes — they explain why Hitler could act, but not why war came.

Notice: The student has not simply repeated their introduction. They have developed and finalised the debate — explaining not just what the answer is, but precisely why the competing factors are ranked below the main cause. That phrase — "enabling conditions, not primary causes" — is exactly the kind of nuanced evaluative language that earns top marks.

Your conclusion should feel like a verdict, not a summary. A judge at the end of a trial does not say "we have heard evidence from both sides and there are many things to consider." They deliver a verdict — and they explain their reasoning.

You are the judge. The factors are the evidence. Your conclusion is the verdict.

The Third Thing I'll emphasise is the difference between Descriptive Narrative vs. Analysis

Alright so this is the mistake that often separates a C grade student from an A grade student more than almost anything else - and almost every A Level student I know makes this mistake at some point.

What Is the Difference, Exactly?

Think of it this way.

A journalist reports what happened. They give you the facts, the sequence, the events. A historian interrogates what happened. They ask — why did this occur? What does it reveal? How significant was it compared to other factors? What would have happened without it?

When you write descriptively in a History essay, you are being a journalist. Your examiner needs you to be a historian.

Here's what descriptive writing Looks Like.

Let's consider this possible question: "Why did the Weimar Republic face so many problems in the years 1919–1923?"

"The Weimar Republic faced many problems in the years 1919–1923. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Germany lost territory, had to pay reparations of 132 billion gold marks, and had its army reduced to 100,000 men. Many Germans were angry about this. In 1920, there was the Kapp Putsch, when Wolfgang Kapp tried to overthrow the government. In 1923, hyperinflation hit Germany and prices rose rapidly. People's savings became worthless. In 1923, the Munich Putsch also took place, when Hitler tried to seize power. The Weimar Republic clearly faced many problems in these years."

You have just described a timeline. You have given me dates, names, and events — and virtually nothing else. You told me people were "angry" about Versailles but never explored why that anger translated into political instability or how it undermined the Republic's legitimacy. You listed the Kapp Putsch but never asked what it revealed about the fragility of democratic support among the elites. You mentioned hyperinflation but never connected it to the reparations crisis or explained why it was politically catastrophic beyond the economic damage.

This paragraph could have been written by someone who read a Wikipedia summary the night before the exam. That is not an insult — it is a warning. Description alone cannot access the higher mark bands.

What Analytical Writing Looks Like

Now watch what happens when we take the same knowledge and ask why, how, and how significant.

The most fundamental problem facing the Weimar Republic in these years was not any single crisis, but rather the way in which its legitimacy was compromised from the very moment of its birth. The Republic was established in November 1918 not through revolution or popular demand, but through military collapse — and crucially, it was the Republic's politicians, not the generals who had actually lost the war, who signed the armistice. This created the conditions for the "stab-in-the-back" myth, which the right exploited relentlessly to delegitimise democratic government itself. When the Treaty of Versailles followed in 1919, with its reparations of 132 billion gold marks and its territorial losses, it became a poisoned inheritance — the Republic was forced to accept humiliating terms it had no part in creating, which meant that every subsequent economic hardship could be blamed not on the war, but on democracy. Hyperinflation in 1923 therefore became politically as well as economically devastating: it did not merely destroy savings, it confirmed, in the minds of millions of middle-class Germans, the narrative that the Republic was both incompetent and illegitimate. The Kapp Putsch of 1920 and the Munich Putsch of 1923, though both failures, further revealed that this hostility was not limited to the streets — it extended to the army, the judiciary, and the traditional elites who tolerated or sympathised with those attempting to destroy democracy. The Republic's problems were therefore not a series of separate crises, but interconnected symptoms of a single, deeper wound: it had inherited blame for defeat without inheriting the loyalty of the institutions it needed to survive.

The Four Questions That Turn Description Into Analysis

Before you finish any paragraph, interrogate it with these questions. If you cannot answer them in your writing, you are being descriptive.

The Lazy Question (Description)	The Historian's Question (Analysis)
What happened?	Why did it happen, and what did it reveal?
What was this factor?	How did this factor interact with others?
Was this important?	Why was this more or less significant than the alternative?
What were the consequences?	Why were these consequences significant at this particular moment?

The Sentence Structures That Signal Analysis

Train yourself to use these constructions — they force you to analyse rather than describe.

• "This was significant not simply because... but because it revealed..."

• "Without [Factor A], [Factor B] could not have..."

• "What made this particularly damaging was not... but rather..."

• "This demonstrates that... which in turn suggests..."

• "The real importance of this lies not in... but in the way it..."

• "This did not merely cause... it fundamentally undermined..."

These phrases are not decorative. They are the grammatical shape of analytical thinking. They force a relationship, a comparison, a deeper significance — which is precisely what examiners are looking for.

Knowing what happened gets you into the exam room. Explaining why it matters gets you the marks.

Every fact you include must earn its place by being used — not recited. Ask yourself, genuinely, after every paragraph: have I told the examiner something they could not have worked out simply by reading a textbook?

If your paragraph only contains information that already exists in a textbook, and contains no argument, no weighing, no exploration of relationships — then you have described, not analysed.

The moment you start asking why, how significant, compared to what, under what conditions, with what consequences — that is the moment you will start gaining more marks.

Fix these three things and I can almost guarantee your marks will improve — I've seen it happen with too many students to count. If this helped, please share it with your classmates. Good luck!