HSC Modern History exam 2024: Why NESA handed students a ‘quirky’ paper
This year’s “quirky” Modern History HSC paper asked test-takers to transform two sentences into a 15-mark response. Here’s how to answer it.
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One of the HSC’s most intensive essay-writing exams has stumped students just three pages in, after this year’s “quirky” Modern History paper asked test-takers to transform two sentences into a 15-mark response.
The first section of the exam, covering “Power and Authority in the Modern World 1919-1946”, is the only part of the paper in which each question is answered by every course candidate, and requires students to incorporate several given “sources” – ranging from photographs to posters, to speech or newspaper excerpts – into their answers.
In a twist that baffled some students, for the first time since the syllabus changed in 2019 only three stimulus sources were provided and just three questions asked, with the final question worth 15 marks.
Asked “To what extent does Source C accurately reflect the impact of Hitler’s dictatorship on German society between 1933 and 1939”, the Source C in question – an extract from a 1936 speech by leader of the German Labour Front Robert Ley – was just 16 words in length.
St Mary’s Cathedral College history teacher Ashley Pereira said the length of question three was “unusual” and would require students to write three or four paragraphs in an essay format.
“We don’t get sources that short,” he said.
“But the beauty of it is that it is just so broad – there’s nothing specific in it … you can pick and choose whatever you want, if you’re more familiar, for example, with treatment of minorities or religion or workers … it’s there.”
The paper’s contents proved divisive with some students expressing relief online – offering “a big fat kiss and cuddle” to the writers – while others describing it as “a sick and twisted prank”.
“Modern history gotta be a joke subject, 3 bloody extended short answers in common mod,” one wrote.
St Mary’s students Will Kelleher, Dylan Tran, Harry Abbey and Harry Reed were surprised to see such a long question crop up, with the brevity of the source both a benefit – “less reading and less interpretation” – and a burden.
“It was a pretty awkward way of doing it, it was definitely different from the previous HSC exams,” Kelleher said.
“I felt like I was repeating myself a lot,” Reed added.
Mr Pereira noted the exam was “quirky” for another reason – while the questions in the second and third sections, spread out across multiple countries and societies, were fairly “straightforward”, they all shared similar themes.
For the first time, every ‘B’ option in the “National Studies” section asked students to “evaluate” their chosen country’s changes in foreign policy, while every question in the “Peace and Conflict” section required students to respond to a “why” question, with the ‘A’ option looking at the cause of a conflict.
This was likely the NSW Education Standards Authority responding to the challenge of “moderating” questions across all the available study options – up to eight of them in the national studies sections – to make marking fair for every student in the state, Mr Pereira said.
“The danger with the peace and conflict section is that students tell a story, they fall into that trap, and that was certainly a possible trap for that first option,” he warned.
Harry Abbey and his classmates studied Japan for their national study, Europe before and during WWII for “peace and conflict” and the US civil rights movement for “change in the modern world”.
“I didn’t think there were really any curveballs to be honest, but I was sort of surprised with the conflict in Europe questions – I haven’t seen questions like that before,” Abbey said.
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