Clarification details
Updated February 2025. All sections of this document have been updated to address the most common issues that have been sighted during external moderation.
Analysis
Analysis requires students to move beyond descriptions of what happened in an event or at a place, and to use key historical ideas with supporting evidence to communicate an argument.
Analysis could involve, for example:
- identifying different versions of the history and making comments and judgements about the differences
- examining causes and motives behind historical events and relating these to a point of view that the student is supporting or arguing.
For Excellence, students also need to present their own judgements on the historical debates and differences they have discussed as part of their analysis. This should not be written in first person.
Responding to a specific question or moot is more likely to result in providing the type of evidence required for analysis, and helps students to clearly communicate an argument. For example, a topic such as ‘The Battle of Passchendaele: more gross incompetence by the generals – or not?’ requires students to make an argument, and is likely to elicit more analysis than the topic, ‘The Battle of Passchendaele’.
Drawing conclusions as a historian
When students draw a conclusion ‘as a historian’, it may:
- result logically from the argument that has been constructed in the paragraph or across the response
- be drawn from and based on the analysis of the past by carefully examining historical evidence from primary and secondary sources
- may go “beyond the obvious” (e.g. is not a largely uncontested comment about causation or effect) and show understanding of the broader historical context
- be based on a reasoned interpretation which is balanced and fair (rather than selective and skewed)
- reflect the complex and constructed nature of the History.
Other requirements
As at Level 2, students need to process their evidence so that it is presented through key historical ideas that they have discerned. A key historical idea is usually expressed as the topic sentence of a paragraph. At Level 3, each key idea needs to be supported with specific evidence at a depth appropriate for level 8 of the curriculum. A document further explaining key historical ideas is available near the bottom of the NZQA History subject page.
The significance to New Zealanders of the historical event or place
Students need to address this requirement in a specific way rather than only by inference. Students must analyse the ways in which the place or event is significant and provide specific historical evidence to support what is written. This section is likely to be more than a paragraph in length, and be between 350-450 words. The degree of difficulty in establishing significance for a particular context should be considered when making an assessment judgement on this aspect of the standard.