SACE Stage 2 Modern History cheat sheet

SACE Stage 2 Modern History school assessment is weighted at 70% of the final subject grade, with the external assessment contributing the remaining 30%.

School assessment comprises a folio of skills tasks and an individual historical study; the folio and the study are each worth 35% of the total subject grade.

Folio tasks assess the five historical skills: understanding chronology, using evidence, analysing and evaluating sources, understanding historical perspectives, and explaining continuity and change.

A source analysis must address origin, purpose, context, reliability and usefulness before drawing an inference; describing content alone is not an evaluation.

Reliability and usefulness are separate judgments: a source can be unreliable yet highly useful as evidence of the attitudes of its producer.

The individual historical study requires a research question, a plan, and a final product of up to 2000 words (or equivalent), with a maximum of 10 sources annotated.

A hypothesis in the historical study must be arguable and evidence-based; a question answerable by a single uncontested fact is not a valid research question.

Referencing conventions for the historical study require consistent citation of all sources, including author, title, date and location of publication.

Performance standards are reported A to E; an A grade requires sustained, sophisticated evaluation of sources and reasoned, well-supported argument.

The external assessment is a 3-hour written examination worth 30% of the subject grade, completed under supervised conditions.

The examination comprises a sources analysis section and an essay section; both sections must be attempted for full marks.

The sources analysis section presents a set of sources on a theme; questions typically move from comprehension to inference to evaluation of usefulness and reliability.

Essay questions require reference to at least two historical periods or contexts studied, with evidence drawn from the course content.

Marks for essays are allocated for argument, use of evidence, evaluation of sources or interpretations, and structure; a narrative recount earns limited credit.

An evaluation of a source's usefulness must consider its provenance and its limitations relative to the specific question asked, not reliability in general.

Time management convention: roughly one-third of examination time for source analysis and two-thirds for the essay, with brief planning before writing.

Quotations or statistics used as evidence must be attributed; unattributed claims of fact are treated as unsupported in marking.