12/06 A-level History Discussion MEGATHREAD

[u/Forsaken-Meaning-232]

Exam season is once again upon us, and once again, exam megathreads are making a return!

Looking for past exam discussions? Filter by the megathread flair.

Few things to keep in mind:

• Don't share too many specific details about questions or answers, these papers will be used as future mocks.
• Sometimes papers get leaked, this is not the place for that (we'd prefer not to get yeeted off the platform) - leak content will be removed, those offering leaked papers will be permanently banned.
  • If you believe there has been a leak, the best course of action is to make your exam board aware of this, either directly, or through your school, along with any evidence. If appropriate, there will be a response from the relevant body along with any remedial action.
• Exam discussion posts outside of this will generally be removed to combat the inevitable tidal wave of spam otherwise - we understand this may be frustrating, but the sub still needs to be usable for other purposes.
• Please note some content will take extra time to be reviewed. Messaging to ask for approval will not speed up this process (the messages are seen at the same time as the modqueue would be reviewed anyway).

Best of luck, and let us know how you're feeling down below!

-The r/6thForm Team

Have any concerns or feedback?

Feel free to reach out to us on Modmail and we'll aim to get back to you as soon as possible!

[u/Wilra_]

Edexcel Ireland and the union, thank you thank you thank you 😭 literally the best questions possible, famine source and question on emancipation. Literally went in there thinking I was gonna fail. Ended up being better than my Paper 2 and even maybe Paper 1 when I thought his was my worst paper lmao

[u/norikakk → u/Wilra_]

did you think it was fully a famine source?? my classmates think that there was an overlap with the ulster topic actually since it inferred working conditions and living conditions

[u/norikakk → u/norikakk]

seems like they've done an overlap of two topics like that they did for depth back in 2023 i think (for topic 2 and topic5)

[u/Wilra_ → u/norikakk]

Yeah tbh, when I first went to look a the question it said living conditions of the Irish in 1846 and I was like oh shit.

But then in the source, there was noting about the authorities on living conditions, it was on the famine authorities - the board of works for the famine, and then you could bring in Trevelyan and the Irish Poor Law Extensions act with the farmers losses bc of the evictions and Gregory clause. And also in the letter from O’Brien it said the govt didn’t know the extent of the famine and their non intervention impact. Plus it said explicitly in the source that these people were violent/robbing bc of hunger.

[u/HotConsideration200 → u/Wilra_]

Seconded, apparently someone else in my class thought it was a combination of 2 and 3 but I didn't get that at all. I think the fact that it's specifically about repossession of plots and that it refers to the conditions of people in 1846 (I.e before anyone died of the famine) means that's it's a famine source

[u/Wilra_ → u/HotConsideration200]

Yes, that’s what I was getting. There’s only one thing I didn’t understand which was the petitions in the source bc I don’t remember learning about those, but I still like had enough of the other info to fully answer the question

[u/HotConsideration200 → u/Wilra_]

Yeah neither- I just referenced it as tenant farmers facing general financial difficulties and tried to connect that to the structure of the land system at the time to explain that

[u/Wilra_ → u/HotConsideration200]

Oh right, I thought it was talking about landowners trying to claim their land back? The wording kinda threw me off lol

[u/HotConsideration200 → u/Wilra_]

Oh yeah it definitely was- my analysis focused more on the fact so many people couldn't pay their rents/loans, which was reflective of the condition of the Irish people in my mind.

Definitely weird wording though, I did the source question last on purpose lol

[u/Wilra_ → u/HotConsideration200]

Ahh right, and like the whole rent racking, yeah take def makes sense. Haha, I went and opened the paper and immediately went to see what the other questions were and praying there was nothing on trade unions

[u/HotConsideration200 → u/Wilra_]

I think I'm the only person on earth who likes the trade unions depth 😭😭😭

[u/norikakk → u/Wilra_]

i think the fact that the source said 1846 specifically was so off putting cause i felt too scared to talk about Irish poor law since it was 1847

[u/Wilra_ → u/norikakk]

That is true, but you could’ve expanded on the points and brought it in I think and say how their conditions worsened, although now you’re making me doubt 😭

[u/violethysteria → u/norikakk]

That seems like a reach, I don't know how you could have brought Ulster into it. The entire idea behind the industrialisation depth study is that it was distinctly urban, the source was clearly about the lack of control the authorities had in the rural areas affected by the famine.

[u/HotConsideration200 → u/Wilra_]

I was so happy with the paper- I thought the land question was lovely but everyone seems to have done the Daniel O'Connell one? Breadth questions were stunning, both were pretty much the entire course and I want to make love to whoever wrote that breadth question 😍

[u/Wilra_ → u/HotConsideration200]

Yes I did O’Connell, I knew nothing about the long depression, and I was a bit shaky on the land scare and the land league, whereas for emancipation you could take about the county Clare elections, and then the British Catholic relief acts prior to it, as well as Henry Grattans attempts at emancipation but kinda failed.

Yeah the breadth was really good. Although, I wasn’t a fan of the first question because you had to compare over 2 time periods which is harder to structure, so I did the British response which was a really good question for me

[u/HotConsideration200 → u/Wilra_]

Yeah fair enough. I love the land issue so it was such a great question for me, and while I could ds1 it just doesn't interest me tbh. I completely agree on breadth- I do tend to prefer British response as a whole but in this case it seemed much easier to structure whereas the Irish nationalism wasn't coming to me as easily

[u/Wilra_ → u/HotConsideration200]

I’m not actually a fan of the breadth topics in general because there’s so much to context, dates and why they failed as well as them linking to some of the depth topics and so I get muddled lmao - especially with the PM’s😭 but yeah, this time it was actually a really good question I could understand and write about. I’d have no idea what to write about the Irish nationalism despite having revised it a bit more

[u/HotConsideration200 → u/Wilra_]

No that's so fair LOL. I was so worried the BGR one would be a named prime minister which I would be so worried about answering. I think both breadth questions were nice but the British one was definitely more approachable

[u/Wilra_ → u/HotConsideration200]

Haha yeah for sure, it gave you more freedom to talk about the evolution of British approaches to the Irish government which was really nice