Students investigate the aims and purposes of history and how these have been understood differently by historians across time and cultures

This is the 25 mark Section I source question. The NESA mapping grid links it directly to the key question "What are the purposes of history?", so a band 6 answer (21 to 25) must argue a sustained judgement about WHY historians construct and re-construct the past, not narrate a list of schools.

Set up the judgement

Both sources frame history as purposeful argument rather than neutral record: Holt insists history is "fundamentally and inescapably narrative" with a plot the historian imposes, and Luis and Rapanta define the discipline as "an ongoing debate" advanced through argument, counterargument and rebuttal. Use them to argue that the purpose of history (to explain, to persuade, to make meaning) drives changing interpretation.

Integrate sources for the top band

The marking guidelines require sustained integration of Sources A and B PLUS at least TWO other relevant sources. Bring in named figures whose declared purposes reshaped history, for example Ranke's purpose of showing the past "as it actually was", Carr's view that the historian's questions shape the facts, or a feminist or Marxist historian recovering a purpose of social justice. Contrast their aims explicitly.

Sustain to a conclusion

Markers reward an insightful judgement maintained throughout: argue that because historians write for different purposes and audiences, interpretation necessarily changes, making purpose, not the evidence alone, the engine of historiographical change.

Worth 25 marks. The 2021 mapping grid ties this to "What are the purposes of history?" and "the availability of historical evidence", so frame certainty as bound up with what history is FOR. A band 6 response gives a critical judgement on the extent to which historians can be certain about the past, with integrated source use.

Take a defensible position. The strongest answers argue a qualified judgement rather than yes or no: historians cannot reach absolute certainty, yet can reach reasoned, evidence-based and defensible conclusions. Engelhart's courtroom analogy ("History is uncertain; lawyers want guilt or innocence") supplies the sceptical pole; Evans supplies the rebuttal that there is "such a thing as an objective historian" who tests ideas against evidence.

Connect certainty to purpose. Argue that the degree of certainty historians seek depends on their purpose: a Rankean empiricist pursuing the archive aims at higher certainty than a postmodernist who treats history as construction. Bring in at least ONE further source (Carr, White or Windschuttle) to deepen the debate.

Sustain the judgement to a conclusion that history is provisional but not arbitrary: certainty is a matter of degree, disciplined by evidence and method.

Two purposes with attribution (3 marks, up to 1.5 each). Any two of: the moral/didactic purpose (Thucydides, or Livy and Tacitus); the national-identity purpose (Macaulay's Whig History of England); the scientific/explanatory purpose (Marx, or Braudel and the Annales school); the emancipatory purpose (E.P. Thompson, or feminist/postcolonial historians); the sceptical purpose (Hayden White).

Marking spine: each purpose correctly named and paired with an accurate historian (1.5 marks each: 1 for the purpose, 0.5 for a correctly matched name). A purpose with no historian, or a mismatched pairing (e.g. attributing Whig history to Thompson), loses the attribution mark.

Butterfield's target (2 marks). Butterfield attacked the habit, common in nineteenth-century British historians such as Macaulay, of writing the past as a story of inevitable and gloriously progressive development toward the present, judging past figures by how far they advanced or hindered that progress.

Why it matters (2 marks). This criticism shows that a chosen purpose (celebrating the nation's rise) can distort method, by selecting and arranging evidence to fit a predetermined triumphant narrative rather than judging the past on its own terms.

Marking spine: an accurate description of Whig history as a story of inevitable national progress (2), and the point that Butterfield's critique shows purpose shaping (and potentially distorting) method (2). A vague "history that favours the Whigs" answer without the progress-narrative element caps at 1 to 2.

A 6-mark 'explain' needs both purposes defined, and a clear contrast in the kind of evidence and subject each purpose privileges.

Thucydides' didactic purpose (about 3 marks). Thucydides wrote his history of the Peloponnesian War as, in his own words, a possession for all time, aiming to instruct future readers in how power and human nature behave under the pressure of war. His method privileges the words and decisions of statesmen and generals (set-piece speeches, strategic turning points), because the lesson he wants to teach concerns leadership and judgement in crisis.

Thompson's emancipatory purpose (about 3 marks). Thompson, in The Making of the English Working Class (1963), wrote explicitly to rescue the labouring poor from what he called the enormous condescension of posterity. His method privileges evidence usually excluded from elite-focused history, such as trade union records, popular ballads and artisan diaries, because his purpose is to recover the agency of ordinary people, not to instruct the powerful.

Marking spine: an accurate account of each purpose (1.5 marks each) and an explicit contrast in the type of evidence/subject each method privileges as a consequence (3). Simply summarising both purposes with no contrast in method caps at mid-band.

A 5-mark 'assess' rewards a clear position with named evidence, not just restating the claim.

The claim is too narrow (about 3 marks). The claim collapses Ranke's specific empiricist aim (to show the past wie es eigentlich gewesen, as it actually happened) into the ONLY legitimate purpose, treating every other aim as illegitimate distortion. This ignores that historians such as Fernand Braudel (explaining long-run economic and geographic structures) and E.P. Thompson (recovering silenced voices for social justice) pursue purposes that are genuinely different from, not merely biased departures from, empirical reconstruction.

A defensible counter-position (about 2 marks). All of Ranke, Braudel and Thompson still rely on evidence and disciplined method; they differ in WHAT QUESTION they think history should answer (what happened, why deep structures changed, whose voice was silenced), not in whether they respect evidence. The discipline therefore contains multiple LEGITIMATE purposes rather than one truth-seeking purpose corrupted by bias.

Marking spine: identification that the claim wrongly treats one purpose (Rankean empiricism) as the only valid one (2), at least two named historians used as evidence of legitimate alternative purposes (2), and a clear final judgement (1).

A 5-mark stimulus question rewards close reading of BOTH extracts before generalising.

Read Extract 1 (about 2 marks). Extract 1 exemplifies the Whig, national-progress purpose associated with historians such as Macaulay: history written to celebrate an inevitable, triumphant national story (liberty, progress) with the nation-state and its institutions as the subject.

Read Extract 2 and contrast (about 3 marks). Extract 2 echoes E.P. Thompson's emancipatory purpose: rescuing the labouring poor from condescension, making ordinary, previously silenced people rather than the triumphant nation the subject. The shift between the extracts shows history moving from a purpose of celebrating power and progress (top-down) to a purpose of recovering marginalised experience (bottom-up), reflecting the wider twentieth-century emancipatory turn in the discipline.

Marking spine: accurate identification of the purpose in each extract with reference to the actual wording (2), and an explicit statement of how and why the purpose changed between them (3).

An 8-mark 'evaluate' needs a sustained thesis using at least three named purposes/historians, and a calibrated final judgement, not a list of schools.

Band 6 PLAN.

Thesis: The persistent disagreement over the aims and purposes of history, from moral instruction through nationalist celebration, scientific explanation and emancipatory recovery to sceptical doubt, is strong evidence that history is a constructed discipline whose products are shaped by the purpose the historian adopts, though this does not mean history is arbitrary or without evidential discipline.

Argument 1 - moral and national purposes shaped selection. Thucydides wrote to instruct future leaders, privileging statesmen's speeches and decisions; nineteenth-century Whig historians such as Macaulay wrote to celebrate the nation's onward progress, a purpose Herbert Butterfield later condemned in The Whig Interpretation of History for distorting judgement of the past by the standards of the present. Different purposes here produced different, non-neutral selections of evidence from the same past.

Argument 2 - the emancipatory turn shows purpose can radically redirect the discipline's subject. E.P. Thompson's declared purpose, in The Making of the English Working Class (1963), to rescue the labouring poor from the enormous condescension of posterity, and the subsequent feminist and postcolonial historiography influenced by Edward Said, redirected history's subject matter entirely, toward previously silenced groups, proving that WHO gets written into history depends on WHY the historian is writing.

Argument 3 - the sceptical challenge (Hayden White) sharpens the construction thesis, but Richard Evans's rebuttal shows disagreement does not mean anything goes. White's Metahistory (1973) argued historical narrative is shaped by literary plot forms as much as evidence, radicalising the claim that purpose (here, aesthetic and ideological) drives construction; Evans, in In Defence of History, countered that disciplined engagement with evidence still distinguishes history from fiction, regardless of the historian's purpose.

Counter-weight/judgement: the disagreement over purpose is real and shows history is constructed rather than simply discovered, but Evans's rebuttal is a necessary corrective: construction operates within, not instead of, the discipline of evidence, so the statement is broadly right about construction but overstates the case if taken to mean history is purely subjective.

Marker's note: markers reward a sustained thesis using at least three distinct, named purposes/historians (not a list), explicit use of the sceptical/empiricist debate (White versus Evans) to test the claim, and a calibrated final judgement that affirms construction without collapsing into "anything goes". An answer naming purposes with no historians, or ending without a clear judgement, cannot reach the top band.