I enjoy Higher Politics. I’m not the only one.

In 2022 1,935 candidates sat Higher

Politics. Every year Higher Politics grows in popularity.

I enjoy the freedom to teach topics that interest me and hopefully the youngsters in
my class.

I enjoy the theoretical aspects and the freedom to discuss political ideas and content
going back in time. Higher Politics allows a perspective which Modern Studies lacks.

I enjoy the relative predictability of the exam. This reduces stress and allows the
class to study topics in depth, not too concerned about a dash to cover everything.

Less is more.

What I’m referring to here is Paper One of Higher Politics. Paper One is all good.

However, I’m not a fan of Paper Two, in particular, the Leviathan (I like that) 20-mark
Source question.

Firstly, it imbalances the exam. Unlike Higher Modern Studies which has three
source based questions, Higher Politics puts way too much emphasis on the
analysis of data and coming to conclusions about it.

Question 1, the comparison question has 8 marks, Question 2 has 20. That can’t be
right.

Secondly, the marking guidelines and the actual question which is being asked. See
below.
I’ve been for a lie down in a darkened room and have now returned.

Quite apart from being incredibly complicated, the marking guidelines don’t
accurately relate to what candidates are asked to do.

The marking guidelines refer to ‘components’ and ‘aspects’ but there’s no

signposting in the Question Paper about what a component is and what is an aspect
is.

The Oxford Learner’s dictionary defines a component as

And an Aspect is.

It’s not a semantic point. There’s much of a difference between a component and an
aspect and why do we even need these things?

Thirdly, the evaluation of this question.

5 marks are available for ‘evaluation of the viewpoint’. But there’s not a viewpoint.
There are various viewpoints contained in the above statement. Some are accurate,
others less so but there’s not one viewpoint, something which is even acknowledged
in the marking guidelines which refer to ‘the first part of the viewpoint’ and ‘the
second part of the viewpoint’.

How are candidates supposed to know where part one stops and part two starts?
Especially as they are asked to comment on the one viewpoint.

There are actually five sentences in the statement (or is it a viewpoint?). All of these
are arguably viewpoints or components or aspects.

It’s a mess.

Change is needed. I suggest.

1 Keep the 8-mark comparison question as it is.

2 Bring the current Question 2, 20 marker back to being the 12 marker it originally
was. Retire ‘component’ and ‘aspect’.

Instead, show various electoral data as usual. Candidates answer the question
“Which party can justifiably claim to be the most successful in recent elections?”.

Marking guidelines can then become much more comprehensible. There will be right
answers and wrong answers. The paper will also become more balanced. This
question for obvious practical reasons remains in Political Parties and Elections.

3 Devise a new 8-mark question.

It could be text based, for example, a political opinion piece by a columnist in a
quality publication such as The Herald, Guardian, Times, Telegraph, New
Statesman, Spectator etc

This relates well to the Course Specification

Candidates could be asked three questions on the text.

3, 3 and 2 marks each.

For example….

Edited from Joyce MacMillan

The Scotsman 3 February 2023
1 It’s more than 40 years since Margaret Thatcher launched her great

2 1980s’ culture war against the miners, and against the very idea of trade

3 unionism, and since then, Labour has had to deny all knowledge of such arcane

4 20th-century practices as striking and picketing, in order to have any hope of

5 winning power at Westminster. Last summer, Starmer said plainly that “those who

6 want to be in government should not be on picket lines”; and he sacked shadow

7 minister Sam Tarry, for appearing on a picket line at Euston Station.

8 Between the general elections of 2017 and 2019, Labour’s vote fell by almost eight

9 per cent, driven down by a fiercely personalised campaign against Jeremy

10 Corbyn, and by exasperation with Labour’s wishy-washy stance on Europe.

11 Labour is now riding high in the polls, almost 20 per cent ahead of the chaotic fin-

12 de-regime Tories.

13 Yet there is something about the extremity of the meltdown over which Rishi

14 Sunak is now presiding – the fierce cost-of-living crisis, the crushing energy bills,

15 the breaking-point stress on so many public services – that sometimes leaves

16 Starmer looking less than equal to the challenges he faces. He might perhaps be

17 wise to spend some time looking at the real distribution of votes in recent

18 elections, before he makes sweeping assumptions about what the people – or

19 peoples – of the UK really now want from their government.

20 The 2016 Brexit victory that still holds him in thrall, for example, was won by a

21 margin of less than two per cent. Boris Johnson’s legendary “landslide victory” of

22 December 2019, much referenced in Starmer’s battle against Corbynism, was

23 won with only 43 per cent of the vote, and with policies that have never enjoyed

24 majority popular support.

25 Starmer might also look at the result of the 2017 general election, in which Labour

26 under Jeremy Corbyn came within two percentage points of Theresa May’s

27 Tories; he should certainly revisit John McDonnell’s powerful 2017 manifesto,

28 probably the most coherent and far-sighted programme for UK-wide renewal any

29 British political party has produced this century, although that may not be saying

30 much.

31 And he should also carefully study voting patterns in Wales, Northern Ireland, and

32 Scotland. That exercise might show him, among other things, just how counter-

33 productive it is for a party trying to rebuild support in Scotland continually to

34 dismiss the SNP as a bunch of right-wing disruptors who can easily be ignored,

35 when Scottish voters have been steadily and consistently choosing them as their

36 centre-left government for the last 16 years.

37 Trying to heal the broken Britain he will inherit, though, is a very different matter.

38 And my guess is that very early in his career as Prime Minister, he will find that

39 any serious attempt at repairing the economic damage done over years of Tory

40 rule, and the huge geographical and constitutional breaches it has helped to

41 deepen, will require a kind of economic radicalism that currently seems far

42 beyond his reach; and perhaps also a willingness to renegotiate the sacred

43 absolutes of Westminster sovereignty that no British Prime Minister has dared to

44 contemplate, since the day a century ago when David Lloyd George signed

45 Ireland’s independence treaty, and set at least one part of these islands free, to

46 shape its own destiny.

Answer the following questions in your own words.

1 What is the writer’s line of argument? (3)

2 Lines 16 - 32 Give three pieces of advice she offers Keir Starmer (3)
 3 Lines 37 46- Give two reasons why the writer feels “trying to heal the broken
Britain he will inherit, though, is a very different matter. “ (2)

I’m not saying my new question is perfect. Feel free to devise different, better
questions or a different, better text. But a type of question such as the above would
encourage greater reading and analysis of quality publications and class discussion.

It would make teaching Higher Politics more enjoyable. And it would lead to a better,
fairer exam for the candidates.