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Prioritising the forces

What the grade ladder asks for, in the standard's own words

Analyse (Achieved) — "examining a significant historical trend and explaining the force(s) that influenced the trend."
Analyse, in depth (Merit) — "assessing the importance of the force(s) that influenced a significant historical trend."
Comprehensively analyse (Excellence) — "examining the force(s)... and presenting well-considered judgements that demonstrate understanding of the complexity of the trend and/or the force(s)."
The verb changes at Merit, exactly as it does in AS91438. Achieved explains. Merit assesses importance. Explaining two forces perfectly is an Achieved essay.
The 2025 schedule spells out four rungs, and the wording is worth memorising:

	The schedule's wording
A3	Attempts to explain TWO forces, and which was the more important and why
A4	Explains TWO forces, and which was the more important and why
M5	Assesses TWO forces, and which was the more important and why
M6	Assesses and prioritises TWO forces, prioritising which was the more important and why
E7/E8	Evaluates TWO forces, showing insight that prioritises which was more important, acknowledging the complexity of the relationship between the trend and the forces

Note where "complexity" is located at Excellence: in the RELATIONSHIP between the trend and the forces, not in the trend and not in the forces separately.

Criteria for ranking two forces

"More important" is not defined for you, and choosing the criterion is the assessed judgement. Four are genuinely available.
- Necessity — remove this force and the trend does not run at all. The strongest criterion where it applies, because it is a claim about dependence rather than magnitude.
- Persistence across phases — a force operating throughout the trend has a better claim than one confined to a single period. This criterion is only available in a trend essay, because an event has no phases.
- Reach — how much of the trend the force explains: all of it, or only its speed, or only one region or group.
- Independence — a force that operated on its own has a stronger claim than one that worked only through the other.
Avoid ranking by how much evidence you happen to have. It is the commonest hidden criterion and it is not a historical judgement.

Forces interact, and saying so is required rather than optional

Forces are ideas, concepts and conditions, and these are rarely independent. Industrialisation promotes urbanisation, which promotes new ideas about work.
So the AS91438 independence rule — your second item must not be downstream of your first — is harder to satisfy here, and pretending it is satisfied when it is not produces a circular comparison.
Three honest relationships, and naming which one you have is itself the "complexity" Excellence asks for:
- Independent — the two forces arose separately and both bore on the trend. Cleanest to compare.
- Reinforcing — each strengthened the other, so the trend moved faster than either alone would have produced.
- Opposed — one promoted the trend and one limited it. Often the richest, because the trend's actual outcome sits between them and its position shows which prevailed.
The opposed pair is where continuities pay off, because the force holding a boundary is identified by the boundary that held.

Historiography, which this standard expects and AS91438 does not

The 2025 report's grade lists put it at every level:
- Achieved — "attempted to use historiography"
- Merit — "used historiography appropriately"
- Excellence — "selected relevant historiography effectively"
Compare AS91438, where the 2024 report says historiography is "not a requirement for Excellence" and warns against substituting it for the candidate's own analysis. The rules genuinely differ between the two papers.
Why it belongs here. A trend is not found in a source — it is a periodisation, and someone decided which events belong to it. Citing historians who identify the same trend supplies the warrant for your claim that it is one trend; citing historians who divide it differently supplies the complexity.
How to use it without substituting it for your own work:
- Name the interpretation, not just the name. Historians who emphasise economic conditions argue X is usable; Historian Y says X without the position is not.
- Use disagreement, not agreement. Two historians prioritising different forces hands you the comparison the question asks for.
- Adjudicate. The 2025 Excellence descriptor is "selected relevant historiography effectively" — selection implies you chose it for a purpose, and the purpose is your argument.

Tips and Tricks

Tips and tricks

Prepare one historiographical disagreement, not five names. Two historians who prioritise different forces for your trend is worth more than a list, because it does structural work: it establishes that the prioritisation is genuinely contested, which is what "complexity" means here.

State your relationship between the two forces explicitly — independent, reinforcing, or opposed. One sentence. It is the cheapest way to satisfy the Excellence descriptor's requirement to acknowledge the complexity of the relationship between the trend and the forces.

If your two forces are reinforcing, be careful about the comparison. When each strengthens the other, "which mattered more" can become unanswerable — and an unanswerable comparison reads as a dodge. Either pick a criterion that separates them anyway, such as which came first or which persisted longer, or choose a different second force.

Do not rank by evidence volume. If you find yourself arguing that a force was more important because you can say more about it, stop and pick a real criterion. Markers see this often and it is transparent.

Worked Example

Worked example

A candidate's trend is British migration to New Zealand in the nineteenth century — one of the standard's own examples. They have identified two forces and must decide which was more important.

Force 1: Economic and social conditions in Britain — land shortage, industrial change and rural displacement. A condition.
Force 2: Ideas about colonial settlement and opportunity, promoted through emigration literature and schemes. An idea.

Question: which was more important, and how should the comparison be built?

Answer:

Step 1 — check both against the standard's definition of a force.

Force 1 is a condition; Force 2 is an idea. Both are among the three permitted kinds, so neither is disqualified. Note that a shipping company or a named promoter would not be a force — those are organisations and people, and would have to be reframed as the ideas or conditions they carried.

Step 2 — establish the relationship between them before ranking.

These are not independent. Emigration schemes and their literature were designed for people whose circumstances made leaving thinkable, and those circumstances were created by Force 1. The honest description is reinforcing, with a direction: Force 1 created the disposition, Force 2 directed and enabled it.

Saying this in one sentence satisfies the Excellence descriptor's requirement to acknowledge the complexity of the relationship — and it must be said, because pretending they are independent would make the comparison circular.

Step 3 — choose the criterion, and notice that different criteria give different winners.

By necessity: remove Force 1 and there is no population disposed to leave. Force 1 wins.
By reach — which explains more of the trend's specific shape: conditions explain that people left; they do not explain why New Zealand rather than anywhere else. Force 2 wins, because destination is part of what the trend is.
By persistence across phases: if conditions in Britain shifted over the century while promotion continued, Force 2 wins; if the reverse, Force 1.

Step 4 — make the judgement, and show that it is criterion-dependent.

On necessity, the conditions in Britain were the more important force — without displacement there was no population to move, and the schemes would have had no audience. But necessity is a weak test for a trend defined partly by its destination. The trend is not "British people left" but "British people came here", and conditions explain the departure while ideas explain the direction. Measured by how much of the trend each force explains, the two are close, and their interaction — conditions creating the disposition, promotion supplying the destination — matters more than the ranking. Weighted by explanatory reach, the promotion of colonial settlement is the more important of the two, because the alternative destinations available to a displaced British family were many, and it is the ideas that account for the one chosen.

Step 5 — check what that has delivered against the schedule.

Two forces explained — Achieved.
Both assessed against a criterion and ranked — Merit.
Two criteria named, giving different winners, with a reason for preferring one; and the relationship between the forces acknowledged — Excellence.

Show the ranking would change under a different criterion, then choose one and say why. That single move satisfies the Excellence requirement to acknowledge the complexity of the relationship — using no evidence you did not already have.