Practice: a source set and three questions
About this practice set
- Everything below is INVENTED. The Borough of Northmere, its council, its newspaper, its residents and every source described here do not exist and never did.
- This is deliberate and necessary. NZQA's resource booklets are copyright and cannot be reproduced, and inventing sources about a real event would put invented words into real people's mouths and invented claims into the record of a real place.
- The context is built on the theme NZQA announced for 2026 — how a single event from the past helps to explain wider cultural and social attitudes of that time and place — so the practice transfers even though the material is fictional.
- For real past papers and resource booklets, go to NZQA's own site. They are free, and they are the best practice available. This set exists so you can rehearse the method before you spend a real paper learning it.
INVENTED Introduction — the Northmere Baths decision, 1923
Northmere is a fictional New Zealand borough of about 4,000 people. In 1922 its council built municipal swimming baths, funded by a rate levied on all householders. In March 1923 the council resolved that the baths would open to men and boys on five days a week and to women and girls on two, with the two days also being the days on which the water was changed last. The decision was debated in the local press for six weeks and was amended the following year.
Glossary
- rate — a local property tax levied by a borough council
- ratepayer — a person liable to pay that tax, in this period usually a property owner
- borough council — the elected local authority for a town
The INVENTED sources, described
- Source A (primary, 1922). An extract from the council's published minutes recording the decision to build the baths, and the stated purpose: public health and "the teaching of swimming to the young."
- Source B (primary, March 1923). The council minute recording the days allocation, with the vote recorded as seven to two.
- Source C (primary, March 1923). A report in the Northmere Advertiser summarising the debate, quoting one councillor on cost and one on "the proper order of use."
- Source D (primary, April 1923). A signed letter to the Advertiser from a woman ratepayer, objecting that women pay the same rate for two-sevenths of the access.
- Source E (primary, April 1923). A signed letter to the Advertiser opposing any change, arguing from custom and from the number of men employed in the district.
- Source F (primary, April 1923). An advertisement for private swimming lessons for "ladies and children" placed by a local instructor.
- Source G (primary, 1923). A photograph described as showing a queue outside the baths on a women's day, with the caption written by the newspaper.
- Source H (primary, May 1923). A petition to the council, with 214 signatures, requesting equal allocation.
- Source I (primary, 1924). The council minute recording an amended allocation of four days and three.
- Source J (secondary, 2004). An extract from a local history describing the dispute as typical of municipal disputes of the period.
- Source K (secondary, 2018). An extract from a historian arguing that such disputes reveal assumptions about whose leisure was considered a public good.
Practice Question One — Cause and effect
Use the Introduction and Sources A–C to answer this question.
What led the Northmere Borough Council to allocate the baths as it did in March 1923? Use evidence from the Introduction and Sources A–C to support your argument.
Practice Question Two — Continuity and change
Use Sources D–I to answer this question. You may use evidence from any of the other sources.
In what ways do the responses to the council's decision in Sources D–I demonstrate the historical concept of continuity and change?
Practice Question Three — Reliability and usefulness
Use Sources G and K to answer this question.
How useful would Sources G and K be to a historian studying attitudes to women's use of public facilities in New Zealand in the 1920s?
Worked Example
Worked example
Practice Question Two — Continuity and change. Here is how to build the answer, using only the invented sources described above.
Answer:
Step 1 — read every named source before writing. Then ask the two grouping questions.
What do D, E, F, G, H and I have in common? — All are responses to the allocation, and all treat the allocation as something requiring justification. None treats it as self-evidently right or self-evidently wrong.
Where do they split? — They split by what they appeal to. D and H argue from payment and equality; E argues from custom and employment; F and G show people working around the allocation rather than contesting it; I is the council's partial concession.
Step 2 — locate the change, and be precise about what changed.
The allocation moved from five-and-two to four-and-three (Source I). But the more interesting change is in the terms of the argument: D and H introduce the ratepayer claim — equal payment entitling equal access — which appears nowhere in the council's own reasoning in Sources A to C.
Step 3 — locate the continuity, and remember it will not be stated in any source.
No source in the set questions that the days must be allocated at all. D and H ask for a different split; they do not ask for shared use. E defends the existing split. I concedes a different split. The assumption that men's and women's use must be separated is shared by everyone in the dispute, including those who won the change.
That is a continuity, and it is invisible source by source — every individual source is about the split, so only reading them as a group reveals that the split itself is never in question.
Step 4 — write it as two substantiated generalisations.
Step 5 — check it against the schedule.
- Two generalisations, both with plural subjects and single claims.
- Both substantiated — each names its sources and specifies what in each supports the claim.
- Both halves of the concept addressed, which is Merit's requirement.
- The final sentence draws a conclusion no source states, from what all of them assume — the standard's own definition of insight.