OCR A Level History Past Papers

It’s time to start preparing for your exams and it’s never been easier with School History. We’ve got hundreds of past papers that are easy to use, come with mark schemes, and are specifically tailored to each specific examination board, so you can get the most from your revision time and enter your examination feeling confident and fully prepared.

Why use past exam papers?

The answer is simple: preparedness. As a A Level student, exams become an important part of your assessment criteria and preparation for A-levels. The use and importance of past papers, therefore, cannot be over-emphasised.

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Using past papers are an effective way to establish your strengths and weaknesses so you know where to focus your revision time. Don’t spend hours on a topic you’re familiar with while neglecting an area that needs more time and effort to familiarise yourself with.

Learn effective time management

Proper time management can quite literally mean the difference between passing and failing an exam, even if you know everything that’s required to pass. Your revision time and using past papers is an excellent way to start practicing how to properly manage the time in the exam setting. You’ll be given different styles of questions with different mark allocations, so it’s important to know what’s expected of you and how much time to dedicate to each question, whether its a multiple-choice question, short answer or an essay.

Walk into your exam with confidence

With proper preparation, it’s possible to walk into and out of your exam feeling confident. Confidence is key to performing well as doubt and anxiety can cloud your judgment and affect your ability to think clearly and make the proper decisions. Past papers are the most effective way to familiarise yourself with important terminology, vocabulary, and styles of questions so that you have a solid understanding of what is expected of you to excel in each and every style of question.

Get to know your questions

Remember, some questions will be assessing your knowledge and understanding of key features and characteristics of a period studied, others will require you to explain and analyse historic events, others will require you to compare and contrast source material and contextualise it in the historic environment, while thematic studies will require you to demonstrate knowledge clearly over centuries while following a particular theme. All of these questions require you to substantiate your answers using facts.

All these questions will be awarded marks in levels, i.e. basic, simple, developed and complex, and short answers and essay questions will also have marks awarded for spelling and grammar. By practicing with past papers you’ll have access to mark schemes, which examiners use to evaluate your responses and you’ll quickly learn how to achieve the most marks while striking the right balance with time management.

Where do I find past papers? Right here, of course! School History has hundreds of examination-style questions to help you practice for your history exams. By signing up, you’ll not only have access to past papers but thousands of resources related to what you’re studying, including notes, activities, quiz questions and more. Let’s dive in! Take a look below at the major examination boards we cover. Give yourself every advantage to excel in your exams and sign up today!