A Level Ancient History Tutoring, for Every Board
A Level Ancient History is awarded only by OCR, and its difficulty lies in the evidence: much of what is known about Sparta, Athens or the Julio-Claudian emperors comes from a small set of ancient writers, inscriptions, coins and buildings, each with its own purpose and bias. Students have to argue from those prescribed sources and, at the same time, weigh what modern historians have made of them.
Short answer
A Level Ancient History is offered online, one-to-one.
A private lesson runs 90 minutes and starts at USD 95 per lesson; lessons are booked singly or in packages.
No group class runs for this exam.
From USD 95 per lesson
- Structure shown for OCR
- Live online lessons of 90 minutes
- From USD 95 per lesson
How A Level Ancient History is assessed, board by board
This page covers one specification for this subject: OCR A Level Ancient History (H407). It is set out below from the board's own document. If your school enters you with a different board, tell us on the intro call and we will work from that board's specification instead.
OCR
OCR A Level Ancient History (H407)
| Component | Share of grade | Length | Marks | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greek Period Study and Enquiry — A period study (25%) and a depth study (25%) in one paper | 50% | 2 hours 30 min | 98 marks | source evaluation and essay |
| Roman Period Study and Enquiry — A period study (25%) and a depth study (25%) in one paper | 50% | 2 hours 30 min | 98 marks | source evaluation and essay |
- OCR is the only board awarding A Level Ancient History, so the board question does not arise. What does matter is which period and depth options the school entered — the Greek and Roman papers each combine two, chosen from a published list.
Checked on 22 September 2026
Specifications are revised periodically. Each block links to the specification it was read from and gives the date it was checked; if your school has moved to a newer specification, that document takes precedence.
What A Level Ancient History covers
The syllabus areas most boards share. Which ones appear, in what order and on which paper differs by board and by specification code — your own specification is the final word. Topic names are left in English, as they appear on the paper.
Greek History
Athenian democracy and its institutions · The Persian Wars: Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis · The Peloponnesian War and the Athens–Sparta rivalry · Ancient sources: Herodotus, Thucydides
Roman History
The Roman Republic: senate and magistrates · The fall of the Republic: Caesar, Pompey · Augustus and the Principate · Roman society: slavery, citizenship, religion
Where A Level Ancient History marks are usually lost
Retelling the period instead of arguing
The period-study essays cover a long span — relations between Greek states and with Persia, or the Julio-Claudian emperors — and students who know the story well tend to retell it in order. The essay rewards a sustained judgement on the question asked, built from analysis and evaluation of the ancient sources. A long narrative with a conclusion attached at the end earns little, however accurate the detail.
Quoting a source without weighing it
The depth-study source question presents one or more ancient sources and asks how useful they are as evidence for a particular event or situation. Paraphrasing the content and calling it useful loses marks. The marks go to judging each source in its context — who wrote or made it, when, for whom, and how that purpose shapes it: Thucydides on Sparta, Tacitus on Agricola’s governorship of Britain, Suetonius on Vespasian.
Treating the historian’s extract as another source
The interpretation question gives an unseen extract by an academic historian and asks the student to evaluate it within the wider debate. Students lose marks by summarising the extract, or by attacking it with ancient evidence alone. The marks go to identifying the historian’s argument, placing it among other historians’ views, and testing it against the student’s own knowledge of the period.
How we teach A Level Ancient History
A tutor starts from the route the school has entered: one Greek depth study among Sparta, Athens and Macedon, and one Roman among the late Republic, the Flavians and Roman Britain, each studied beside its compulsory period study. The prescribed sources are read closely in translation — Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, the Res Gestae, inscriptions and coins — with a running note on each author’s date, purpose and reliability, so that evaluating a source becomes habit rather than formula. Lessons alternate between planning essays in the styles OCR uses and writing timed answers that are marked and rewritten. A few modern historians are followed through each major debate, so that an unseen extract can be placed in an argument the student already knows.
Your starting point is reviewed before the study plan is finalised. The exact method depends on the programme and is agreed on the intro call — for some students that means a timed section, for others it means reading a recent score report or a piece of marked work. We will tell you which applies to you before you book anything, rather than describing a process here that may not be the one you get.
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