Doing well in History is actually easy once students have a firm grasp of the mechanics behind how to approach the questions. However, unlike subjects like Maths or Science, this cannot be fixed by just doing practice on exam papers. Practice is pointless without relevant feedback, as students might not know that they are still making the same mistakes over and over again.


Being a former history teacher, I find that students face difficulty in dealing with History source-based questions because they are more concerned about giving the "right" answer without considering the process of deriving the answer. Unfortunately, the new assessment format students have to go through now differ greatly to when we were in school, and therefore, not many parents can provide the guidance needed as few are familiar with the requirements.

Over the next few years, more schools will move towards task-based or project-based assessments that are already widely used in several IP schools. These assessments although meant to test students in more a practical manner and move away from pen-and-paper assessments bring about new sets of challenges.

My main advice to parents is to forget what you went through for history when you were in school, and encourage your child to do 2 things:

1. Embrace the ambiguity of the subject. There are no "right" answers, although there are some answers that are preferred. What teachers want to be able to see is students being able to see relevant points based on informed inferences and providing the relevant evidence to support their points.

2. Think of source-based questions as comprehension of texts using historical knowledge. We are really looking at literacy competency, or ability to understand what the sources are saying in the context of history.

Of course knowing the content of what they are studying is important, but it is no longer the be-all and end-all.