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AQA GCSE Citizenship Studies revision

These activities are mapped to AQA GCSE Citizenship Studies 8100. Sixteen of them, fifteen to twenty-eight minutes each, across life in modern Britain, rights and responsibilities, politics and participation, and active citizenship. **One section of Paper 1 is about something that happened in your school.** Active Citizenship asks students about the action they planned and carried out themselves: what they did, why, what they would change. No national resource has seen it and none can revise it. Two activities here cover the half that does generalise, which is what the questions ask for and how to evaluate an action, including other people's. The strength of the set is elsewhere: four substantial activities on how the British state is actually put together, which is the part students most reliably muddle.

This page lists what we actually have for AQA GCSE Citizenship Studies 8100. It is built from the live activities, so it is accurate on the day you read it.

The section about something that happened in your school

Citizenship has a feature that no other written GCSE quite shares. Paper 1, Section A asks candidates about a citizenship action they personally took part in: a campaign, a consultation, a piece of advocacy, planned and carried out and then evaluated.

A national revision site has never seen that action. It cannot supply the aim, the method, the obstacle in week three or the thing your students would do differently. Any resource claiming to revise Active Citizenship is either vague or wrong.

What can be prepared is the shape of the answer. Two activities go at that. One covers what the questions actually ask for: the sequence from research to planning to action to evaluation, and the vocabulary of impact and evidence. The other looks at the actions of other people, which is how a student learns to judge an action critically before turning that judgement on their own.

Use them before the write-up, not instead of it.

The institutions, which is where the set is strong

Four activities carry most of the weight, and they are the longest here.

Local and devolved government, at twenty-eight minutes and eighteen steps, is the largest single activity anywhere on this site. It covers what councils actually do, how devolution divides power differently in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and where public money comes from and goes.

Parliament and voting systems, also twenty-eight minutes, covers first past the post against the alternatives, what happens to a bill, and the difference between the Commons and the Lords in practice rather than in a diagram.

Government formation and the civil service covers the bit students find genuinely strange: that the government is not the same thing as Parliament, and that most of the state carries on regardless of who won.

The British constitution and democracy is the prerequisite for all three, and the one to set first.

Together they are the densest institutional coverage on this site, and institutions are where Citizenship answers fall apart: a student who calls the government "the MPs" has lost marks before writing a second sentence.

Content that dates, and how these handle it

Citizenship is the subject most exposed to time. Parties change, powers move, treaties are signed and left, and a case study that was current when it was written can be misleading three years later.

These activities lean on structures rather than on personalities and current holders of office, which slows the decay without stopping it. Rights and responsibilities is covered through Magna Carta to the Human Rights Act and through universal human rights, which are durable. The justice system and legal rights are covered as process.

Even so, this is a page to treat as needing a fresher look than the science ones. Our Edexcel GCSE Citizenship Studies page examines the same problem from the other board's side and is blunter still about how far its content has kept up.

Using them

The three activities embedded further down are playable here without an account.

The lists below group by classroom use, worked out from what each activity contains. For how each is meant to be run, see ready-to-run revision activities. To put several in front of one class in order, build a sprint and share one link. Everything else, by subject and board, is on the revision pages.

What this page does not do

Nothing for your students' own citizenship action beyond the frame for writing about it.

No current affairs. These teach the machinery, not this month's news, and a Citizenship class needs both.

It is not a scheme of work. For a shape to drop these into, see how to structure a GCSE revision programme.

It does not track anything, so there is no completion list to check.

Every live Citizenship Studies activity for AQA

16 activities, all mapped to AQA GCSE Citizenship Studies (8100).

See all 16, by topic

Try it with your class

AQA Citizenship Studies 28 minutes

Local and Devolved Government, Voting and Public Money

18 steps, 11 interactive, 9 activity types.

Best used for
Homework Independent study Cover lesson
  • Homework: Set it as a link. It marks itself.
  • Independent study: Explains before it asks, so a student can work alone.
  • Cover lesson: Teaches and tests in one go, so a non-specialist can run it.

Try one question

Residents want a new pedestrian crossing outside a primary school. Which level of government would they approach first, and why?

AQA Citizenship Studies 28 minutes

Voting Systems and How Parliament Works

16 steps, 11 interactive, 11 activity types.

Best used for
Intervention Mock preparation Cover lesson
  • Intervention: Mostly questions, so it finds the gap quickly.
  • Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.
  • Cover lesson: Teaches and tests in one go, so a non-specialist can run it.

Try one question

Across all five constituencies Party A received 200 votes out of 500, which is 40 per cent, and won all five seats. Under a proportional system Party A would have held two of the five. Which statement describes this accurately?

AQA Citizenship Studies 24 minutes

Citizenship Action: the Actions of Others

14 steps, 9 interactive, 10 activity types.

Best used for
Independent study Mock preparation Cover lesson
  • Independent study: Explains before it asks, so a student can work alone.
  • Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.
  • Cover lesson: Teaches and tests in one go, so a non-specialist can run it.

Try one question

A source is a campaign group's own newsletter, describing an action they organised and calling it a success. How should you use it?

Common questions

Can you revise Active Citizenship?

Only the frame. Paper 1 Section A asks about the citizenship action your students actually carried out, which we have never seen. Two activities here cover what the questions ask for and how to evaluate an action, including other people's, which is the half that generalises.

What is best covered?

The institutions. Four activities at twenty to twenty-eight minutes cover the constitution and democracy, parliament and voting systems, local and devolved government with public money, and how a government is formed alongside the civil service.

Why does the political content date so quickly?

Because it names things that change: parties, systems, powers, who holds what. These activities lean on structures rather than personalities for that reason, but a Citizenship resource needs rereading more often than a chemistry one.

How much is here?

Sixteen activities, fifteen to twenty-eight minutes, across all four content themes and the cross-cutting citizenship skills.

Which should a class do first?

The constitution and democracy activity, because the vocabulary in it is assumed by everything on Paper 1.

Will I see who has completed them?

No. Following a shared link records nothing about who followed it, which is a deliberate choice about children's data.

Put one in front of a class

Tell us the subject and how long you have. You get a link to hand out, and it marks itself.

Create a free teacher account

Written by David Wright, Co-Founder, DoRevision.

David builds DoRevision with his son Noah (15). David has spent his career building EdTech products, and Noah has grown up watching lines of code being written. As a student at an important stage of his education, together they are building the revision platform that Noah is using to help revise for his GCSE exams and hopes his friends will find useful too.

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  • Edexcel GCSE Citizenship Studies revision Every live Edexcel GCSE Citizenship Studies (1CS0) revision activity. Half of this course is settled and half of it changes while students are studying it. These activities carry the settled half, on purpose, and say so.
  • How to structure a GCSE revision programme The five decisions a department has to make before a revision programme is worth writing down, and the problem each one heads off. Deliberately about the shape rather than the calendar.
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