What AS91436 asks you to do
The three skills the standard names
- The standard defines analyse as "using historians' skills to interpret evidence in order to demonstrate understanding of historical concepts."
- Three skills are named, and only three:
- Close reading — attending to the exact words, including what is implied rather than stated.
- Comprehension — understanding what the source says on its own terms.
- Extracting meaning — drawing out what the source shows beyond what it says.
- Notice what is not on the list: prior knowledge of the topic. The booklet supplies the content. You are not being assessed on whether you have heard of the event.
- The standard defines Excellence in its own words, which is unusual and worth memorising: "Insight includes 'reading between the lines' to draw conclusions that go beyond the immediately obvious and demonstrate a high degree of engagement with the evidence."
What the booklet contains
- An Introduction, which supplies the context and is itself a source you may quote. Question One nearly always requires it.
- A numbered glossary attached to the Introduction, defining difficult or te reo Māori terms used in the sources.
- Between 8 and 15 labelled sources. Recent papers ran A–H, A–K, and A–L, with some letters split into parts such as G1, G2 and G3.
- Primary and secondary sources together, which the 2026 specification states explicitly. Primary sources are from the time; secondary sources are later accounts, usually by historians.
- Written and visual sources every year — newspaper reports, letters to the editor, oral history extracts, historians' writing, photographs, cartoons, advertisements, statistics.
The three questions, and what each does
- Every paper 2022–2025 had exactly three questions, each headed with a named historical concept.
- Question One — the concept is either Perspectives or Cause and effect, alternating. It uses the Introduction plus an early block of sources, and it is answerable entirely from the booklet.
- Question Two — Continuity and change in three of the four years. It uses a middle block.
- Question Three — the variable one. It was reliability and usefulness in 2022 and 2024, past and present in 2023, and significance in 2025.
- Do not learn a rule about which concept sits at which question number. Learn the concepts.
- Questions name a block of sources, and several years add "you may use evidence from any of the other sources" — so the named block is a floor, not a ceiling, and the 2025 report lists "referred to sources other than those specified, where relevant" under Excellence.
The marks, and why they are harsher than Level 2
- The paper is marked out of 24 — three questions of 8 each.
- Cut scores in 2025: Not Achieved 0–8, Achieved 9–12, Merit 13–18, Excellence 19–24.
- At Level 2, AS91231's Achieved band starts at 8. Here it starts at 9. The Level 3 paper asks more for the same nominal band.
- Three questions of equal weight means one unattempted question caps you at 16 out of 24 — inside Merit but nowhere near Excellence. The 2024 report lists "completed two or fewer questions out of three" under Not Achieved.
- Attempting all three badly beats attempting two well. The arithmetic is not close.
Worked Example
Worked example
A candidate finishes Question One at the 25-minute mark of a 60-minute paper. Their answer is a full page and they are pleased with it. What has gone wrong, and what should they do?
Answer:
Step 1 — do the arithmetic before deciding anything.
Three questions, 8 marks each, 24 total. 60 minutes divided equally is 20 minutes per question, less a few minutes to read the booklet — realistically about 17 minutes of writing each.
At 25 minutes for Question One, they are 8 minutes over on a third of the paper. If the pattern continues they will reach Question Three with roughly 10 minutes left.
Step 2 — work out what the overspend actually bought.
Nothing, in mark terms. Question One is capped at 8 whatever its length, and the 2026 specification asks for paragraph-length answers. A full page on an 8-mark paragraph question is past the point where additional writing can score, and the 2025 report describes exactly this: candidates using mnemonics produced "lengthy responses that do not directly address the questions."
Step 3 — work out what the overspend will cost.
Question Three is where the cost lands, and it is the most expensive place for it to land.
- The 2024 report lists "completed two or fewer questions out of three" under Not Achieved.
- Question Three carries the same 8 marks as Question One. A rushed half-answer scoring 3 instead of 6 loses three marks — the same three marks the extra page on Question One could not possibly have earned.
Step 4 — decide what to do right now.
Stop. Move to Question Two immediately without rereading Question One.
- Do not go back and improve Question One. It is capped, and it is already long.
- Set a hard limit for Question Two — 17 minutes — and enforce it even mid-sentence.
- Leave the remaining time for Question Three, which is the variable question and the one most likely to need thinking rather than recall.
Step 5 — the general rule this illustrates.
Equal marks deserve equal time, and time cannot be transferred forward into score. The marginal value of the 20th minute on a question you have already answered is zero; the marginal value of the 5th minute on a question you have not started is very high.