Most A-Level History students know their 25-marker needs an introduction, three analytical paragraphs, and a conclusion. Fewer know what the introduction is actually for. Too many still open with something like "there are many reasons why the USA was responsible for the Cold War, and this essay will discuss both sides" — which isn't a judgement, it's a promise to eventually have one. Examiners read hundreds of these. They can tell within two sentences whether you've already decided what you think, or whether you're planning to find out while you write.

A good AQA A-Level History introduction does three jobs, in this order: it sets the context the essay will argue within, it signposts the themes or strands the essay will use to build that argument, and it states a judgement. That third part is the one most essays get wrong — not because students don't have an opinion, but because "I agree" or "I disagree" isn't specific enough to be one.

Why "I agree" isn't a judgement

A judgement is a position that could be argued against by someone equally well-informed. "The USA was responsible for the Cold War — I agree" fails this test, because it just repeats the question's framing back with a tick attached. It gives the examiner nothing to track through the rest of the essay.

A real judgement takes a specific position and, ideally, complicates the question's own terms rather than accepting them wholesale. If the question says "primarily," your job isn't just to agree or disagree that the USA was primarily responsible — it's to define what "primarily" would require as evidence, and then argue whether that threshold is met. If the question says "main reason," the strongest essays often don't fully accept or fully reject that a single "main reason" exists — they rank the causes and explain why one still isn't decisive on its own.

The judgement has to survive the whole essay, not just live in the introduction

This is the part that separates a Level 4 introduction from a Level 5 one: the judgement can't be filed away in the opening paragraph and forgotten until the conclusion restates it. It has to be the thing every paragraph is arguing toward.

Here's a genuine worked example, taken directly from FlowForge's AQA Cold War pack, for the question "Reagan's policies were the main reason for the end of the Cold War." How far do you agree?

The introduction doesn't open by agreeing or disagreeing. It opens by interrogating the question itself:

"Define 'main reason' — does it mean Reagan's choices caused the end, or that structural Soviet decline made the end inevitable regardless? Thesis: 'Reagan significantly accelerated the end but did not cause it — the structural weaknesses of the Soviet command economy and Gorbachev's own convictions were the decisive factors. Remove Gorbachev from the equation and Reagan's pressure may have produced Soviet retrenchment rather than collapse.'"

Notice what this does. It doesn't say "Reagan was not the main reason" and stop there — that would just be disagreement dressed up in academic language. It makes a specific, falsifiable claim: Reagan accelerated an outcome that was already structurally likely, and the essay will show why removing one variable (Gorbachev) breaks the "Reagan caused it" argument. That's a claim a classmate could genuinely contest — which is exactly what makes it a judgement rather than a stance.

Then watch how it's built to survive the essay, not just open it. Paragraph one takes the "for Reagan" case at its strongest — SDI, the Reagan Doctrine, the "Evil Empire" speech — before paragraph two turns to Soviet structural decline and Gorbachev's own conviction, using Soviet archive evidence that his commitment to reform predated and outlasted US pressure. The AO3 paragraph then adjudicates between two named historiographical positions — Gaddis's view that both Reagan's pressure and Gorbachev's response were necessary conditions, against Lebow and Stein's view that Gorbachev would have reformed regardless. The conclusion doesn't just repeat the thesis; it refines it: "Reagan was a catalyst; the structural causes were primary. The end required both Reagan's pressure and Gorbachev's unique willingness to accept that the Cold War was unsustainable." That's the same judgement from the introduction, now sharpened by everything the essay has argued in between.

A second version of the same move

The same pack's model essay on Cold War origins — "How far was the USA primarily responsible for the Cold War?" — does the identical thing with a different question shape. Rather than opening with a flat "no, it wasn't," the essay steelmans the revisionist case first (Alperovitz and Williams, US atomic diplomacy and dollar imperialism), then uses a timeline argument — Soviet consolidation of Eastern Europe began before the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan were even announced — to defeat it. The conclusion doesn't collapse into "no": "The most defensible verdict is that the USA was significantly but not primarily responsible... The Cold War had shared origins; the USA's share was real but not primary." Again: a qualified position, not a binary one, carried consistently from the opening paragraph to the last line.

Building your own

Before you write your next 25-marker, try this test on your planned judgement: could someone who knows the same content as you construct a serious argument against your exact wording? If your judgement is just the question's claim with "yes" or "no" attached, the answer is no — and you need to narrow it. If your judgement instead takes a position on how much, under what conditions, or compared to what, you've got something an examiner can actually track as it develops across three paragraphs and a conclusion.

Two habits make this easier in the exam room. First, write your judgement as a sentence containing a qualifier — "significantly but not primarily," "accelerated but did not cause," "a necessary but not sufficient condition" — rather than a flat agreement. Second, before your conclusion, check that your last paragraph's final sentence and your introduction's judgement are recognisably the same argument, just more developed. If they've drifted apart, one of your body paragraphs went off-topic.

This full Reagan essay plan — five-step scaffolded, timed to the minute, with the AO3 adjudication built in — along with the annotated origins model essay and four period-by-period evidence banks, is part of FlowForge's AQA A-Level History Cold War pack. You can find it in the shop.