Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.

Teaching History 109, Examining History Edition, launched a range of debates about the role and value of our public examinations in history, debates which have continued in these pages and in history teacher conferences (such as the Historical Association's 2002 Past Forward conference). A theme in these debates has been an insistent concern about GCSE history. The criticisms range widely but chief among them are the failure of GCSE exam to respond to the major curricular and pedagogic theorising and practice by teachers that has transformed Key Stage 3 in the last fifteen years, as well as its lack of alignment with key research findings about, for example, pupil progression in evidential thinking. Teachers complain about different things. Some are frustrated by lack of progression through to A Level, with standard GCSEs taking pupils backwards to pre-Year 8/9 work, ignoring all new work on extended writing in history at Key Stage 3 and failing to build on key teacher-led innovations such as ‘interpretations of history' other than in very superficial ways; others are frustrated at inaccessibility for lower-attaining students, who find the dry routines of the questions pointless, abstract, arcane, bewildering. It was in response to these and other concerns that OCR developed its GCSE Pilot. Here, Katie Hall assesses her department's experience on the Pilot. She argues that the OCR solution has successfully addressed a remarkably wide range of teacher concerns, including those associated both with historical rigour and with inclusion. She urges history teachers to investigate further and to play their part in continuing to influence constructive solutions...