GCSE Exam Predictions 2025: Inter-war years, 1918–1939 (AQA)

As we head into the final stretch before the GCSE History exam, I wanted to take a moment to share some thoughts with you—not just as your teacher, but as someone who’s sat where you sit now, wondering what on earth they might ask this year.

Let’s face it—predicting exam questions is never an exact science. The AQA team likes to keep us on our toes, and rightly so. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use the past to guide our revision today.

I’ve spent some time carefully going through the AQA papers from 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023. By tracking trends and gaps across the syllabus, I think we can narrow our focus a little—especially for those big 8- and 16-mark questions.

Here’s what I found, and what I’d be keeping an eye on if I were revising this week

Looking Back to Look Forward

We've seen a fair bit on the Treaty of Versailles recently. Questions about why the Germans hated it, focusing on territory (2022) and reparations (2019) for the big 16-mark essays. The League's organisation got the essay treatment in 2021, and German rearmament was the big tension topic in 2023's essay. Appeasement and the League's general struggles have also popped up quite a bit in source questions.

So, what does that potentially leave?

• Hitler's Big Plans: While specific actions like rearmament have been covered, I wonder if we might see a broader question on Hitler's overall foreign policy aims as the main driver towards war. It feels like a classic essay topic that hasn't been the central focus of the 16-marker in this recent run.

• The League's Big Crises: We know the League struggled, and its structure was questioned in 2021. But maybe the focus will shift to specific failures as the key turning points? The Manchurian Crisis, in particular, feels a bit overdue for significant attention – perhaps as an 8-mark 'account' question ("Write an account of how the Manchurian Crisis damaged the League...") or even featuring heavily in source analysis. Abyssinia has had an 'account' question (2019), but could still reappear, maybe even as part of a bigger essay on the League's demise.

• Appeasement: It's been dissected in sources, but could this be the year the failure of appeasement takes centre stage in the 16-mark essay? Evaluating why it failed or whether it was the main reason for war feels like fertile ground.

• Key Steps to War:

  • The Anschluss (Austria joining Germany) hasn't been the star of the show recently. I could see this appearing as an 8-mark 'account' or featuring in source questions.

  • The Nazi-Soviet Pact led to an 8-mark question in 2021, but its sheer significance could easily elevate it to a 16-mark essay contender – was this the pact that truly sealed Europe's fate in 1939?

  • Thinking about the end of appeasement – perhaps an 8-mark account on how the invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 shifted everything?

Don't Forget the Basics

Source questions (Q1 and Q2) can draw on almost anything, testing your interpretation and usefulness evaluation skills. Could we see sources on the aims of the Big Three at Versailles, the Rhineland remilitarisation (popped up in 2019 Q2, but could reappear), or maybe even less-focused-on agreements like the Stresa Front or Kellogg-Briand Pact?

My Final Thoughts (and Please Read This Bit!)

Treat these ideas as just that – ideas to help focus your final revision push. Please, please don't bank on only revising these topics. AQA could pull anything out of the syllabus! The best preparation is always to have a solid grasp of the entire 1918-1939 storyline: the hopes of peacemaking, the struggles of the League, and the relentless slide towards another conflict.

Focus on understanding the connections between events. How did Versailles lead to later tensions? How did the League's weaknesses allow aggression to go unchecked? How did Hitler's actions interact with Allied policies like appeasement?

If you're feeling a bit overwhelmed or unsure where to focus, our GCSE guides for AQA at Kingsbridge Education are packed with what you actually need such as clear summaries, countless model answers and integrated flashcards and quizzes to test yourself along the way. Find out more here: https://www.kingsbridgeeducation.co.uk

All in all, you've all worked incredibly hard. Trust in that work, stay calm, read the questions carefully, and show the examiner what you know and what you can do with that knowledge. Goodluck!