Planning the submission
Work in this order
- The order matters because each step constrains the next, and doing them out of order means rework.
- 1. Find the disagreement. Read one secondary account and one contemporary source and look for where they part company. Without a disagreement there is no argument, and without an argument there is no submission.
- 2. Write the central claim as one sentence, and test it: could a well-informed person disagree?
- 3. Read the key historical ideas out of the claim. Two or three, including significance.
- 4. Check the evidence exists for each idea — and drop any idea it does not.
- 5. Check the format can carry the argument (Note 3), before designing anything.
- 6. Draft the sections, each advancing the claim through one idea.
- 7. Write the objection and answer it.
- 8. Restate the claim at the strength the evidence supports.
- Steps 1 to 5 take an afternoon. They determine the grade.
A structure that works
| Section | What it does |
|---|---|
| The claim | State it, and say where the contest lies |
| Context | Only what is needed to make the claim intelligible |
| Idea one | A section organised by the idea, advancing the claim |
| Idea two | The same |
| Significance | Which criterion best measures this event's importance, and why — woven in if possible |
| The objection | Stated at full strength, granted in part, answered |
| The conclusion | The claim restated at the strength the evidence supports |
- Notice what has no section: a narrative of the event. Context is what the claim needs, not what the topic contains.
Self-marking against the descriptors
- Run these six checks on your draft. Each maps to a phrase in the standard.
| Check | The phrase it tests |
|---|---|
| Could a well-informed person disagree with my central sentence? | communicate an argument |
| Do two or three ideas each organise a section, surviving deletion of their names? | using key historical ideas |
| Does every section advance the central claim rather than the topic? | to communicate an argument |
| Have I argued which significance criterion applies, rather than asserting importance? | establishing the significance |
| Does each idea carry three or more specific pieces of evidence? | in-depth supporting evidence (Merit) |
| Is there evidence from both primary and secondary sources, and have I said what my claim does not establish? | comprehensive evidence... conclusions from an historian's perspective (Excellence) |
- A check that fails tells you which descriptor is unmet, which is more useful than an impression that the work is thin.
The three commonest ways a strong project loses grades
- The claim is not deniable, so the whole submission is description however well evidenced. Caught by check one, in a minute, at the start.
- The ideas are chosen from a list rather than read out of the claim, so the sections do not connect. Caught by asking whether the sections could be reordered without loss.
- Significance is a closing paragraph, so it is asserted rather than established. Caught by asking whether any significance sentence appears before the last page.
Worked Example
Worked example
Note: the Riversdale Flats Drainage Scheme is an INVENTED case.
A student has a completed draft. They run the six checks. Here is what happens.
Answer:
Check 1 — is the central claim deniable?
Their sentence: The Riversdale scheme had a major impact on the district and is still remembered today.
Nobody could disagree. Major impact and still remembered are both matters of record.
Check 1 fails, and it fails at the level of the whole submission — so the remaining checks are run against a draft that already cannot meet the standard. The claim must be replaced before anything else is worth assessing.
The replacement: the scheme's significance lies less in the land it created than in how it is remembered, since the 1994 memorial commemorates the displaced settlement and not the works.
Deniable. A reader might say a memorial reflects its committee rather than the district. Check 1 now passes.
Check 2 — do two or three ideas organise sections?
Their draft has sections headed Background, The scheme, The memorial, and Significance.
None of these is a key historical idea. They are stages of a narrative. Check 2 fails.
The fix follows from the new claim, which implies continuity and change, past and present, and significance. The same material is redistributed — the 1955 and 1994 accounts appear in the continuity and change section rather than in two chronological sections.
Check 3 — does every section advance the claim?
Background runs two pages on post-war land policy. Ask: what in the claim would be unintelligible without it?
- Some of it is needed — why drainage was a national priority explains why the 1955 framing was in hectares.
- Most of it is not. Cut to one paragraph.
Check 4 — is significance argued or asserted?
The draft's final section says the scheme was very significant for the district. Asserted.
The fix, using the standard's own criteria: argue that on scale the scheme is modest, and on continuing effect it is substantial — and that for this event the second criterion is the better measure, because a memorial raised thirty-nine years later is evidence of persistence that hectare counts are not. That is an argument, and it is now part of the claim rather than a closing paragraph.
Check 5 — three or more pieces of evidence per idea?
Continuity and change has the 1955 coverage, the 1994 inscription, and the booklet. Three. Passes. Past and present has the same three, used differently. Passes, and note that shared evidence across ideas is efficient rather than repetitive, provided each use is doing different work.
Check 6 — both source kinds, and a stated limit?
Primary: 1955 newspapers, the inscription, the booklet. Secondary: the regional history and the 2019 article. Passes.
No stated limit anywhere. Add one: what the evidence does not establish is what people in the district generally thought, in 1994 or now — the memorial is evidence of a committee's framing that the council did not object to.
Step 7 — count the cost of the revision.
No new research. One replaced sentence, a redistribution of existing material into three sections, two pages of background cut to one paragraph, one significance argument written, and one limiting sentence added.