History GCSE

On this page

• History GCSE Summary
• Why have we chosen AQA?
• How we’re approaching History GCSE
• Rough plan
• Learning resources

Why have we chosen AQA?

For History, you can choose between five different GCSE boards and two IGCSE ones. That sounds totally overwhelming but this is where the HE Exams Wiki comes in. This helpfully summarises the syllabus and exam format for each option so you don’t have to go hunting on the board websites yourself.

Aggie had quite a fixed idea of which periods in history she wanted to study so this made it pretty easy to eliminate some of the boards straight away. We ended up with just AQA and Edexcel left on the list. We went with AQA in the end as this has just two exams rather than Edexcel’s three. Aggie is aiming for the exams in June 2026 when she’ll be sitting many other subjects at the same time so we thought it would reduce some stress by going for two rather than three exams for history.

How we’re approaching History GCSE

Aggie initially wanted to do this course over one year, to sit it alongside sociology in June 2025. After plenty of research, and reading many social media posts about history, we learned that it’s one of the most content-heavy GCSEs there is. Since she genuinely loves learning history, we thought we’d go for two years so she can more comfortably enjoy learning all that content!

Choice of topics and prior experience

Aggie already knew what topics she wanted to study. We’ve covered most periods of history over her KS2 and KS3 learning and not forgetting her Horrible Histories viewing too.

I was delighted with her choice of Elizabethan England as I covered this period as part of my degree. She already knows quite a lot about Elizabeth which gives her a good start. I’m particularly excited about all the places we can visit; our English Heritage membership is going to be very well used!

Surprisingly, Aggie has chosen Power and the People as her thematic study. I was expecting her to go for the health option but apparently she already knows enough about that topic! Power and the People isn’t a popular choice and so there aren’t nearly as many resources around for it. That’s my cue though to get really involved and create some!

It’s the Russia and Cold War topics which Aggie is most excited about. It’s totally new territory for me so I’m looking forward to learning alongside her. We haven’t yet chosen the textbooks for these topics; we’ll see how we get on with the different styles of textbooks for our first two topics first. It’s also possible that she may yet change her mind on these topics…

Rough plan

Above is our plan for the next two academic years. We’ve end up with a long revision period at the end but this will no doubt be shortened by topic overruns.

We will look at exam questions throughout each topic but I’ve worked in time for a concentrated effort on exam technique. We’ve learned from exams in 2024 not to leave this process until the very end.

I’ll be writing up shortly how we’re approaching our first topic on Elizabethan England.

Learning resources