Using sources
History · GCSE · The School
Utility, not just bias
Every source is biased; saying so earns nothing. The question is what a source is USEFUL FOR. A wartime propaganda poster is nearly useless for casualty figures and extremely useful for what the government wanted people to believe. Bias is not a flaw to be deducted — it is evidence about the person who produced it.
Provenance
NOP: Nature (what kind of source), Origin (who made it, when, where), Purpose (why). A private diary and a public speech by the same person on the same day differ because their purpose differs. Quote the provenance in your answer rather than describing the content back to the examiner.
The answer structure
For each source: what it shows, what its provenance adds, what it cannot tell you, and then a judgement on usefulness FOR THE STATED ENQUIRY. That last phrase matters — usefulness is always relative to a question, never absolute, and answers that forget the question lose the top band.
A 1915 British recruitment poster showing a German soldier as a monster. QUESTION A: "How useful is this for finding out what German soldiers were like?" Almost useless — it is propaganda. QUESTION B: "How useful is this for finding out how the British government tried to recruit soldiers?" Extremely useful, and the bias IS the evidence. Same source, opposite answers. Always ask: useful for what?
Cross-reference before you judge
A single source is evidence of one person\u2019s view. Two are evidence of something larger. Where two agree, ask whether they had the same information or the same interest in saying it — agreement between a government report and a government newspaper is not corroboration. Where they conflict, the conflict is itself the finding, and explaining WHY they conflict earns more than deciding which is right.
Your own knowledge is part of the answer
Source questions are not comprehension. The mark scheme expects contextual knowledge used to test the source: what the source claims, and what you know happened. A poster promising a short war is more revealing once you know the war ran four years. Bring one specific fact to each source — a date, a figure, an event — rather than a paragraph of background.