A head of steam for change in GCSE history has been building for some time now amongst history teachers, heads of history, advisers, teacher-trainers, researchers, consultants and all who regularly engage in debate about history teaching and learning. All those who read widely, share their practice, experience many Key Stage 3 and GCSE classrooms and attend subject-specific conferences cannot have missed it. Active response to this is now long overdue. We could be forgiven for thinking, sometimes, that some examiners and awarding bodies, however, seem out of touch with this debate. Do examiners understand why it is that Key Stage 3 teachers feel that ‘interpretations of history’ is not really assessed at all at GCSE? How many outstanding and exciting ‘interpretations of history’ lessons with Year 9 pupils have they recently observed? Why are they not openly acknowledging the dampening effect upon source evaluation and evidence work of the examination demands which effectively take pupils backwards to Years 7 or 8, and alienate pupils in the process? Is the recent transforming work of influential teachers such as Byrom, LeCocq, Smith, Riley, Banham and others simply to be ignored? And are the older lessons such as those from the Teaching History Research Group (of the late 1980s) or Tony McAleavy (of the early 1990s) to be diluted, misunderstood or forever laid aside? Whilst many excellent history teachers simply rise above the problem, teach Years 10 and 11 reflectively and well, secure real progression from Key Stage 3, draw analytically upon practice wider than their own, and then just accommodate and serve the examination demands within their own more robust frameworks, there are many more, at the mercy of multiple current pressures, who are just unable to do this. And it is not their fault. Chris Culpin examines the problems, explores their causes and presents some solutions. He invites examiners and awarding bodies to join in the debates and help to push for change.