TMW’s Natasha Hodgson has written a piece for the Conversation UK on the absence of women in History GCSE and A Level exam papers.
Natasha Hodgson and Catherine Gower recently published a report commissioned by the Teaching Medieval Women group and funded by Nottingham Trent University on 2023 exam data.
This report found that for the 219 papers given by the three top exam boards in England (AQA, Edexcel and OCR) in 2023:
- Over 1/3 of papers (34.7%) featured no women at all – either in the exam paper or accompanying mark schemes. In comparison only 1 out of the 219 papers made no reference to men.
- Only 31 out of the 357 individuals named in questions were women – and Elizabeth I made up 9 of these references.
- Where women were mentioned, they tended to be elite women: of the top 11 referenced women, 9 were royal.
- Only 22 of the 163 named historians in exam papers were women.
- Women only appeared as possible answers in the mark schemes for 22.8% of questions, compared to 83.1% for men.
Yet, despite these findings and despite End Sexism in School’s recent report on how History is taught currently at Key Stage 3, the UK government’s recent Curriculum and Assessment Review report made no mention of this issue.
As Hodgson noted in her article, the current assessment system is letting down students by reinforcing traditional male-dominated narratives and denying them a truly representative history.
