What is Edexcel GCSE History like? And what was it like having it after Gcses?🙂

Hi I'm in year 9 and currently picking my GCSE and can't decide to pick history or business so I would like to know what the history edexcel exams and class are like. And also people who have gone into further education (A-level,University) and also further adulthood with this GCSE just tell me what it did or benefited or really anything to do with History. Just please tell me much about it as possible. Thanks🙂

Hi, 'm in year 11 and I do GCSE History Edexcel! I am doing Weimar and Nazi Germany, Medicine through Time, Cold War and Anglo-Saxons. Personally, I find GCSE History quite interesting and fun to learn and exam questions aren't so hard to answer when you have the knowledge and know how to structure it. However, it's really content heavy, so you should be good with remembering names, dates etc.
But I don't do business so I can't really compare it.
Hope it helps

Hi I'm in year 9 and currently picking my GCSE and can't decide to pick history or business so I would like to know what the history edexcel exams and class are like. And also people who have gone into further education (A-level,University) and also further adulthood with this GCSE just tell me what it did or benefited or really anything to do with History. Just please tell me much about it as possible. Thanks🙂

Hi, I don't do Edexcel History but I do Edexcel Business Studies (year 11 student here!!). The content is not too hard in my opinion, it is a lot to go through but I'm sure you'll enjoy it. There's always 6 markers (discuss and analyse), 9 markers (two options and why using context) and 12 markers (evaluate) in Paper 1 and 2, they ask you about a scenario, it could be that someone is running a business and they may need to raise finance for a project etc like a case study and you have to pick out context from it in order to gain high marks. You'll have to learn formulas and keywords, there's some maths in business but it isn't hard. (just substitue the values into the equation)

Hi I'm in year 9 and currently picking my GCSE and can't decide to pick history or business so I would like to know what the history edexcel exams and class are like. And also people who have gone into further education (A-level,University) and also further adulthood with this GCSE just tell me what it did or benefited or really anything to do with History. Just please tell me much about it as possible. Thanks🙂

Hi I'm in year 9 and currently picking my GCSE and can't decide to pick history or business so I would like to know what the history edexcel exams and class are like. And also people who have gone into further education (A-level,University) and also further adulthood with this GCSE just tell me what it did or benefited or really anything to do with History. Just please tell me much about it as possible. Thanks🙂

Hey, i cant tell you much about gcse business as my school does not offer it however i absolutely LOVE history. I am inn year ten and it is by far my favorite subject. A few things to be aware of are essay writing and time management are very key to this, structure is very important and there is lots of writing involved, almost every lesson i write up to two pages of notes as well as homework of up to another two pages. This is not bad for me as i enjoy writing alot however if you find it difficult to focus on words and find it difficult to stay engaged i advise you to pick bussiness, As well as this, maybe ask your teachers what modules you are doing. I am studying America, Nazi Germany, the Elizabethian era and Medicine i think. I have started Nazi Germany and have finished America. I abolsutely loved America as a topic, it includes topics such as slavery, jazz music, film stars, movie theatres and the wolf street crash. I have just started Germany and it is more technical and more confusiing however I am still enjoying it aalot. It depends on what kind of person you are, however most of the people i know that regret picking the subject simply just picked it as a llast resort and didnt relly enjoy the subject itself. Do you think history as a subject is interesting based on the stuff you have done in year nine? Diffrent topics such as WW1 get continued through the gcse course (leads into world war 2). This could maybe give you an indication on wether or not you like the subject itself. However, if this makes you feel better, out off alot of the people i have seen that pciced geography, more people have regretted picking geography than picking history. I have a great history teacher and go to a grammar school so this may help this. Remember taht it is a lot of work, homeworks take up to foruty minutes and revision takes longer than subjevvcts such as maths as therre is so much content to learn, My advice is to pick it if you like the subject, if you like it the workload wont feel as large (which it isnt taht big compared to other subjects such as art it is just a bit bigger than bussiness pprobably), remember there is alot of content and essay wrrioting but other than that go for it!! im very happy i picked it lol

sorry for thee massive answer with tons of typos lol
Niki xx

Thanks for the response. Sadly you just caught me out with this response because I have already handed in my GCSE form on thursday. The good news is that I picked History. After long consideration and may of your points coming up I chose history as I'm good at it, the history teachers really wanted me to do it and most importantly enjoyed it. I'm prepared to do alot of writing and work but at the end I think it will benefit me the most. thanks again

p.s. The topics are:
Unit 1:
Crime and Punishment in Britain, C.1000 – present
Whitechapel c.1870– c.1900: Crime, policing and the inner city

Unit 2 :
Superpower relations and the Cold War, 1941-91
Early Elizabethan England 1558-85

Unit 3:
Weimar and Nazi Germany, 1918-1939

Hi I'm in year 9 and currently picking my GCSE and can't decide to pick history or business so I would like to know what the history edexcel exams and class are like. And also people who have gone into further education (A-level,University) and also further adulthood with this GCSE just tell me what it did or benefited or really anything to do with History. Just please tell me much about it as possible. Thanks🙂(Original post by StingRay66)

i see, im glad you took history



thats great im happy youu picked hsitroy, remember with all your subjects you can switch in the first term of which many at my school did for art. I havent done most of your topics but Nazi Germany is really fun, I can send my notes or help you with stuff if you need it once you start..

Hey,
I'm currently studying both!
I'm doing business and history and I'm going to be honest it's not that easy. I was mostly encouraged to do history by my family and friends but never really enjoyed it in year 9 and that's where I was in the wrong. There is one thing you need to know about history is that If you don't like it DON'T choose it. I'm talking about experience here. I'm currently revising for the up coming exams right now and I'm suffering soooo much, I have never been interested in history and therefore revising it is definitely not a fun part for me:

You will learn 4 different topics in year 10 and up to the very end of year 11. I am doing medicine in Britain, Elizabethan England, American West and The Weimar and Nazi Germany. It wasn't fun learning these subjects for me for one simple reason, we had to stuff a lot of information in our brain and if you had the bad luck to miss a lesson then this would leave a big gap in your knowledge. Next was the exam preparation, in history they give you styles of questions in which you NEED to know the structure of how to answer, if you don't you don't get the mark, simple. For example, in Weimar and Nazi Germany subject you will have 6 big questions (4 marks, 12 marks, 8 marks, 4 marks, 4 marks, 20 marks) one of the 4 marker is something to do with interpretations that you need to compare, BUT the exam specs DOES NOT allow you to explain why you think the 2 interpretations are different NOR does it allow to use the same words that are used in the interpretation, if you do, you lose marks. I did many practise exams and lost marks without even knowing why.😑

I have been pretty pessimistic about history so on to the good things. Even if I hated it, mostly was do to my school and therefore you might have a different way of learning it. To be honest there was some fun parts that I enjoyed learning so that I could flex my knowledge with my family and this is always a + . History is definitely a complex subject but it's actually easy once you understand and spend you time on it. A lot of people that actually enjoyed history seemed to have fun in every lesson and if you were to do the same topics I am then you probably would too.

I would say If you want to do good in history you really need to focus in lesson and learn how to answer the questions. You don't really need to remember the integrity of the subject but more the key events/consequences/features of the things you are learning but also give a strong opinion on things. Waffling is definitely not going to help you in exams so you need to go straight to the point and respect the structure you are given, that's how you get the mark.
Finally a bit about business too😀, I am doing Btech business and I am having so much fun. It's an easy grade 9 honestly, 60% is coursework and 40% is exams. You have 2 hours during the exams and you can be 100% sure of finish before that. For the coursework, what I enjoyed the most was the Dragon's den, you create your own business and present it for a share. Doing History and Business both together doesn't affect me at all because revision in business is mostly common sense and easy primary school maths.

I hope this helps, 😃 Choose the subject you enjoy the most, I think this is what's going to impact you grades and attitude to learning but also think about if you want to go to college or sixth form and what you plan on doing later in you life. I realised that business and history were both subjects that I didn't really need for the job I wanted but it was too late.
Enjoy,
Telia🌟

Heya!
I did GCSE history but then focused on sciences for alvl and universities It is a very heavy essay subject and there is a lot to remember. Most unis just typically want maths and english GCSE. if it helps, you could check out some past papers and see what you will need to do later on.

I hope this helps!
Milena
UCL PFE
Study Mind

Thanks for the response. Sadly you just caught me out with this response because I have already handed in my GCSE form on thursday. The good news is that I picked History. After long consideration and may of your points coming up I chose history as I'm good at it, the history teachers really wanted me to do it and most importantly enjoyed it. I'm prepared to do alot of writing and work but at the end I think it will benefit me the most. thanks again

p.s. The topics are:
Unit 1:
Crime and Punishment in Britain, C.1000 – present
Whitechapel c.1870– c.1900: Crime, policing and the inner city

Unit 2 :
Superpower relations and the Cold War, 1941-91
Early Elizabethan England 1558-85

Unit 3:
Weimar and Nazi Germany, 1918-1939

hi, glad you choose history. I do weimar and nazi germany and cold war too!!
let me know if you need any help

Will do. I'lll probably have an end of year history GCSE style exam soon. Thanks again for your kindness and help.🙂

Thanks for the response. You just posted this comment a few days after I picked my subjects and decided to do history as I enjoy it and I'm good at the suject. I'll take on board the points you made and improve my structure for History. Do you have one that you could lend to me? Thanks again.

Hey,👋
I think each school have different structures and each are valid in some points. I would say have a look at the past papers of the units your are doing and check the type of questions that come up. In each unit you have a set of questions that will always be the same(like I showed you with the Weimar & Nazi Germany exam paper). It's could make you ahead of others if you want by remembering the arrangements of these questions because it's what you will have to answer for the GCSE anyway. Also and I think probably everyone knows this but look at how many marks you get for each questions you do, with this in mind you know how much time to spend on it, the informations to give, how many paragraphs to do and also the structure of the paragraph. For example in English the structure of a paragraph could PETAL, Point ,evidence, techniques analysis and link, and it's a 20 marker so that means you would have to write a minimum of 3 paragraph including SPAG etc and spend 25 mins or more. In history it's the same thing.

I saw you were doing Elizabethan England which is I think the easiest among the rest, you have 3 types of questions:

Question 1)a b (4 marks) no more than 5 mins
Describe two key features of...
Give a point add details X2

Question 1)b (12 marks) no more than 16mins
Explain why...
Start with a point again, give an evidence explain link back to the question by giving a reason why this is the most/ least important reason why...x3

Question 1)c (16 marks) 20 mins
"statement"
How far do you agree?
Same structure as the 12 marker but with a conclusion and SPAG, However this time the link is your opinion on how far you agree/ disagree.
If your in full control of this question and master it then don't start a paragraph with I strongly agree/disagree because... but with a simple opinion that you elaborate at the end of the paragraphs. For the conclusion add the 3 points you did and give an overall overview on it no need to back up with evidence and explanations.

The reason why there is only 3 questions is probably because you will do 2 papers at once each of them with 3 questions which will sum up to 6 overall. In that case Elizabethan England and something else (maybe cold war)

Anyways, you're welcome😄

Hi I'm in year 9 and currently picking my GCSE and can't decide to pick history or business so I would like to know what the history edexcel exams and class are like. And also people who have gone into further education (A-level,University) and also further adulthood with this GCSE just tell me what it did or benefited or really anything to do with History. Just please tell me much about it as possible. Thanks🙂