The ten historical concepts
The list, and why it is the question bank
- The standard names ten concepts that historians' skills are used to identify. Every exam question since 2022 has been headed with one of them.
- Level 2's AS91231 lists only five. The other five are Level 3 additions.
| Concept | At Level 2 too? | Seen in a Q heading 2022–25 |
|---|---|---|
| Perspectives | Yes | Yes — Q1 in 2022 and 2024 |
| Cause and effect | Yes | Yes — Q1 in 2023 and 2025 |
| Continuity and change | Yes | Yes — Q2 in 2022, 2023 and 2025 |
| Reliability and usefulness | Yes (as reliability/bias) | Yes — Q3 in 2022 and 2024 |
| Intent and motivation | Yes | Not yet |
| Past and present | No — Level 3 only | Yes — Q3 in 2023 |
| Influence and significance | No — Level 3 only | Yes — Q2 in 2024, Q3 in 2025 |
| Bias or propaganda | No — Level 3 only | Not yet |
| Specific and generalised | No — Level 3 only | Not yet |
| Contingency | No — Level 3 only | Not yet |
- Four have not yet appeared as a question heading. They remain in the standard, and the paper may use them. Prepare all ten.
What each concept asks you to look for
- Perspectives — whose view is this, and what made them see it that way? Not just what different people thought, but why their position, interests or experience produced that view. The 2024 report praises candidates who understood "how motivations, backgrounds, and identity can shape perspectives."
- Cause and effect — what led to this, and what followed? Question One in cause-and-effect years asks what led to X and expects the Introduction plus early sources.
- Continuity and change — what moved and what stayed the same? Both halves are required, and the 2025 report says candidates found this concept "the most difficult to evaluate in the sources", while Merit candidates "addressed both 'parts' of a historical concept."
- Reliability and usefulness — two separate questions. Reliable asks whether the source is accurate. Useful asks what it is good evidence for. An unreliable source can be highly useful — evidence of what someone wanted believed.
- Intent and motivation — why was this source made, and what was the maker trying to achieve? Distinct from perspectives, which is about how someone saw things rather than what they wanted.
- Past and present — how does this compare to now, or to a later time in the sources? 2023's Question Three compared advertisements from 1961 and 1970 with 2016.
- Influence and significance — how much did this matter, and to whom? The 2025 report notes that candidates who "used a significance framework to structure their response" analysed more deeply.
- Bias or propaganda — is this source trying to persuade, and by what means? Bias is a slant; propaganda is deliberate persuasion. Neither makes a source worthless.
- Specific and generalised — is this one case or a pattern? Whether a single example in the sources can support a claim about the whole.
- Contingency — could it have gone otherwise? What depended on chance, timing or an individual decision rather than on underlying conditions.
The two concepts most likely to catch you out
- Continuity and change is the most-used concept and the one candidates handle worst.
- The 2025 report says it directly: candidates "found the concept of continuity and change the most difficult to evaluate in the sources."
- The failure is always the same — answering one half. The 2025 Achieved list includes "answered only one part of the question, such as continuity or change."
- The fix is mechanical: write one sentence for each half before you write anything else.
- Reliability and usefulness is misread as one concept.
- Reliability is about accuracy; usefulness is about what the source is evidence for.
- The classic Level 3 move: a source that is unreliable as a record of events may be excellent evidence of the attitudes of the person who produced it — and the 2026 context is about attitudes.
Worked Example
Worked example
A question is headed QUESTION THREE: Reliability and usefulness and asks how useful two named sources would be to a historian studying attitudes at the time.
One source is a signed letter to a newspaper, written by a resident arguing forcefully for one side of a local dispute. A candidate writes:
What has gone wrong, and how should it be rewritten?
Answer:
Step 1 — separate the two questions the concept actually contains.
Reliability asks: is this an accurate account of what happened? Usefulness asks: what is this good evidence FOR?
The candidate has answered the first and then assumed the answer to the second follows from it. It does not, and the assumption is the error.
Step 2 — check the reliability judgement itself, which is sound as far as it goes.
The observation is correct. A partisan letter is a poor guide to events. But note the reasoning is generic — biased, one-sided, emotional language could be written about any partisan source without reading this one. Generic reliability comments are the cheapest thing in the paper and score accordingly.
Step 3 — apply the usefulness question properly, by asking what the question wants evidence of.
The question asks about attitudes at the time. For that purpose:
- The bias is not a defect. It is the data. A letter arguing forcefully for one side is direct evidence that this position existed, was held strongly, and was thought fit to publish.
- The fact that a newspaper printed it is evidence about what was sayable in that place at that time.
- The arguments the writer chose — what they thought would persuade neighbours — reveal shared assumptions the writer did not need to argue for. Those unargued assumptions are the most valuable thing in the source, and finding them is reading between the lines.
Step 4 — rewrite it, keeping the reliability point and correcting the inference.
Step 5 — note which grade descriptors that rewrite has reached.
- Both halves of the concept addressed separately — Merit's "addressed both parts of a historical concept."
- A conclusion drawn from what the source does not say — the standard's own definition of insight: reading between the lines to draw conclusions that go beyond the immediately obvious.