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Australian History Competition

Competition Details

There are two papers based on the Australian History Curriculum.

A year 9 & 10 paper which will be broadly based on the Australian Curriculum History for Years 9 and 10.

A year 7 & 8 paper which will be broadly based on the Australian Curriculum History for Years 7 and 8.

About the questions

  • In each paper students will be given 45 minutes to complete 50 multiple choice questions.
  • Many of the questions will be source-based.
  • Each student will receive a question paper, a source booklet and an answer sheet.
  • The questions will be graded from easy to challenging, catering for a range of abilities.
  • There will be a variety of questions addressing knowledge, skills and understandings.
  • Click the buttons below to view some questions from previous years.

How the competition is organised

  • The Competition date is set as a range to allow teacher’s to run it on a day most suited to their timetable.
  • Enter students in the competition by registering online or by hard copy .
  • We will send question papers for your students and a Teacher Guide for running the competition.
  • Check that you receive the correct number of papers for each year group and contact us if there has been an error.
  • Both competitions are to be run under test conditions in a 45 minute period.
  • Express Post the completed answer sheets to us, postmarked no later than June 4th.
  • Students’ answers will be marked and they will receive awards ranging from Participation to High Distinction.
  • We will return student results and certificates in early August.
  • Medallions will be presented to all State winners and National champions will also receive a special porfolio.

Entry details

  • The cost is a school administration fee of $50 and a fee per student fee of $8.
  • The closing date for registration is March 31st.
  • If a school wishes to change the number of students please notify us by the end of April.
  • No refunds given after the 30th April.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to run the competition on the specified competition date?

No. There is some flexibility about when you can run the competition to fit with your particular school’s diary and timetable. We do specify that if you run the competition earlier that you must collect all papers and source sheets and keep them secure until after the competition has finished.

Do all the students have to sit the competition at the same time?

No. We want the Australian History Competition to be as easy for teachers to run as possible. To save the need for gathering all students in one location or changing the timetable, you can run the competition in your normal timetabled classes provided that you collect all competition papers and source sheets and keep them secure until the competition is completed.

How will the Competition improve my teaching & my students’ performance?

The Australian History Competition will help your teaching in many ways. It provides an interesting, challenging and rewarding experience that will help motivate your students. The AHC also showcases to students and other staff that History is an important subject with opportunities to excel at a national level. By providing you with feedback about your students’ performance against national bench marks the Australian History Competition enables you to highlight areas of teaching where you (and your colleagues) excel. It also enables you to highlight areas of the curriculum where you may need to place more emphasis.

Will my year 7 or year 9 students be disadvantaged?

No. Your year 7 students are marked only against the year 7 students from other schools. The year 8 students are marked separately. The same applies for year 9 students. If you download the sample questions above and read the notes at the end you’ll see that in all competition questions we test student for skills in interpreting data rather than their previous knowledge.

What if my students haven’t done history yet this year?

The questions are designed to test historical skills and concepts so the content that students have covered is not significant to the way students may perform.

What feedback do teachers get on their students’ performance?

Teachers get online access to the results of each student for each question. We also provide school, state and national averages for each question so that you can compare how you students are performing. We aim to link each of the questions to specific historical skills and concepts specified in the Australian Curriculum: History so that teachers can see how their students are performing against the key elements of the curriculum.

Is it possible to do the competition online?

No. At this stage, with the experience of NAPLAN and the South Australian online testing system, we believe that the technical problems are too great. Most teachers find the current paper system easy to use and we don’t want to create extra stress for classroom teachers that can be caused by technical problems outside our control.