Modern History (ATAR): should I choose it?

What will I learn?

How will I be assessed?

Progression and companion subjects

No complete companion or exclusion review is attached to this profile. Check the official course-entry conditions, language eligibility and your school’s sequence before enrolling. Links between resource hubs show related learning; they do not establish a compulsory prerequisite.

Will I find it hard?

Difficulty depends on your experience, interests, teaching and assessment. These are our reflection prompts, not an official difficulty rating.

• Try explaining a case, source or argument with evidence. Does this type of writing interest you?
• Look at the amount of terminology, examples and source material in the sample rather than assuming the subject is easy.

Does it scale up or down?

Modern History, 2025. TISC’s mean scaled scores summarise all students with a scaled score in the published course. The mean describes a cohort and gives no individual raw-to-scaled conversion. A scaled mean alone cannot establish whether this subject scaled up or down. Historical cohort data cannot predict your result or a future scaling direction.

Scaling is not a measure of difficulty or a guaranteed bonus. Prioritise content you can engage with and required subjects for courses you are considering.

Try a little of the subject

The Enlightenment (1750–89)

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement of the long eighteenth century in which writers, scientists and reformers argued that human reason, applied to evidence, could improve knowledge, government and daily life. This elective concentrates on 1750–89, but its roots lie earlier, and the syllabus names three connected causes. Weakening authority of the Church and of absolute monarchy. The Reformation and the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries broke the idea of one Christian authority over Europe. The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years War, recognised Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist worship in the Holy Roman Empire, so no single church could claim to speak for all of Western Christendom. Absolute monarchs such as Louis XIV of France (r. 1643–1715) claimed to rule by divine right, yet expensive wars and heavy taxation exposed the costs of that model. England's Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 offered a contrast: a monarchy limited by Parliament and a Bill of Rights. The Scientific Revolution. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and especially Isaac Newton, whose Principia (1687) explained planetary motion through universal mathematical laws, showed that nature could be understood through observation, experiment and calculation rather than ancient authority. Enlightenment writers asked whether the same method could be applied to society, politics and religion. The spread of ideas. Rising literacy, cheaper printing, periodicals, coffeehouses, Masonic lodges, Parisian salons run by women such as Madame Geoffrin, and learned academies created a cross-border ‘republic of letters’. The Encyclopédie , edited by Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert and published in volumes from 1751 to 1772, gathered practical and philosophical knowledge for

Original practice question: Which statement best explains how the Scientific Revolution contributed to the Enlightenment?

This is ATARMAxxing’s original sample learning material. It is not an official assessment task or a prediction of your school’s workload.

Explore the resources

Open the Modern History (ATAR) subject hub and free preview (opens in a new tab)

• Modern History — WACE Year 12 ATAR (opens in a new tab)

Core subject information and planning are free. Full study resources are optional.