My name is Mark Battye and I'm the History Subject Advisor.
In this video, I'm going to tell you about some of the changes to GCSE History from 2016.
As you know, new subject criteria have been produced by the Department for Education for
GCSE History.
These will apply to new specifications for first teaching September 2016, and the first
examination for the new GCSE will be in Summer 2018.
The draft specifications will be submitted to Ofqual at the beginning of April 2015 and
at this stage we will publish our draft specification on our website.
We've been giving a lot of thought to what information might be useful to share with
you at this point, even though the specification is still very much in development.
Firstly, to reiterate, all new GCSE History specifications from 2016 will have to include:
* A thematic study over 1,000 years * A period study over 50 years
* A study of the historic environment * 40% British History
* A British depth study and a non-British depth study from different eras (that's modern,
early modern and medieval) So because it will no longer be possible to
study entirely modern world history at GCSE, we don't believe it is necessary to have multiple
GCSE History specifications.
Therefore, we will be offering a single GCSE History specification which includes the most
popular topics from the current SHP and Modern World specifications, as well as some engaging
new topics.
We believe that this will provide the maximum choice and flexibility for teachers to create
their own coherent courses.
There are already established thematic studies on Medicine, Crime and Warfare in our existing
SHP specification and we will retain these topics in our new GCSE History specification.
The new criteria mean you will have to do some early modern/medieval history in depth.
We will be offering a range of early British depth studies, including Elizabeth and the
Norman Conquest.
Edexcel SHP teachers will be pleased to hear that in addition we intend to keep the American
West and Weimar/Nazi Germany in our new specification.
Edexcel Modern World teachers will also be pleased to hear that we intend to keep the
Cold War, US Civil Rights and Russia.
We will be offering more topic choices including some which are brand new to GCSE History - and
we'll be letting you know about these over the coming weeks.
I'm now able to provide you with the full choice of modern, wider-world depth studies
that will be on offer in our new GCSE History specification.
They will be: Germany, 1918-39
Russia 1917-41 The USA 1954-75
Mao's China 1945-76 We think that most of our SHP and Modern World
history teachers will be happy with this choice of modern depth topics and with such big changes
being forced upon all history teachers by the new content requirements, some continuity
of topics is important.
If you're worried about your GCSE options evenings or about how new A level courses
will fit with the new GCSE, and you want to speak to someone in our History team about
our proposed topic choices in more detail, please email me at teachinghistory@pearson.com
or call us on 0844 576 0034