No. Every student takes one British period study of thirteen, one non-British period study of twenty-four and one thematic study of twenty-one. That is three units out of fifty-eight.

All fifty-eight are in the guide because no two schools teach the same three. Work yours and skip the rest. Each unit is a separate page.

They have codes. The British period study is Y101 to Y113, the non-British period study Y201 to Y224 and the thematic study Y301 to Y321. Your exam timetable and your teacher will have them, and the unit list here is organised by those codes.

No. Y100, the topic-based essay, is researched independently and marked by your centre. It is 20 per cent of the grade and it is your own chosen question, so there is nothing to recall.

It is the largest single share of the grade and the longest paper at 2 hours 30 minutes, and it is examined on historical interpretations as well as on content. Work it first and return to it most often.

For the thematic study, yes. Historical interpretations are assessed on which historian argued what, what evidence they used and what the counter-argument is.

About twenty minutes for one subtopic, all three steps. Units run from roughly 60 to over 200 questions, so work by subtopic.

Write. History marks turn on specific evidence, and step 2 is where a half-remembered date or name gets replaced by the correct one. The method page sets out the evidence.

Yes. The method puts the evidence into memory. Past papers train the source questions, the interpretations question and the essays under time across three very different papers. OCR publishes them free.

A PDF of 6,240 exam-style questions covering all fifty-eight units of OCR A-Level History A, with the answers printed after each unit.

Because no two schools teach the same three. The specification is built from options: one of thirteen, one of twenty-four and one of twenty-one. Carrying all of them is what makes one guide work for every student, and the units not taught are simply skipped.

There should be handwritten answers on paper and three passes over the same questions, and two scores per session to compare.

History essays are marked on specific evidence. Dates, names, figures and, for the thematic study, named historians. A well-written essay without them reads well and scores less.

£8.00 for all fifty-eight units. Individual OCR unit textbooks run £20 to £30 each and you would need three.

Only three units are worked, so roughly 30 subtopics per unit at twenty minutes each is about 30 hours across two years, not the full 582.

Past papers, which OCR publishes free, their sources and set reading for the coursework, and their own notes.