Worked example · History · Year 11
DCF: Producing → Evaluating and improving digital content
A secure Year 11 response, annotated. It doubles as the answer key for the six claims: 1 supported, 2 contradicted, 3 supported by the available sources, 4 contradicted, 5 supported, 6 contradicted. Claim 3 is the awkward one — the sources are consistent with it but none states it outright, and the reflection at the end shows the honest way to record that. Show this after pupils have completed their own log, and use it to make the point that “not established” is a real verdict rather than a failure.
| Claim | Source used | What that source actually says | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | British Geological Survey, Aberfan landslide case study | “In total, 144 lives were lost, 116 of them children aged mostly between seven and ten… Of the 28 adults who died, five were primary school teachers.” 109 of the dead were in the junior school itself. | Supported |
| 2 | British Geological Survey, same page | Tip 7, the only active tip, was saturated with water and started to move before 07:00 before collapsing into the village. It was a spoil tip failure, a landslide of colliery waste. No earthquake is mentioned anywhere. | Contradicted |
| 3 | UK government inquiry summary, “The Aberfan Disaster, 21 October 1966” | The tribunal blamed the National Coal Board and identified those responsible, but the summary records no prosecution, dismissal or demotion following it. The report’s own phrase is “not villains but decent men”. | Supported |
| 4 | UK government inquiry summary | “The Tribunal sat for 76 days. It was the longest Inquiry of its type in British history up to that date.” It interviewed 136 witnesses, examined 300 exhibits and heard 2,500,000 words, retiring on 28 April 1967 and reporting on 3 August 1967. | Contradicted — 76 days, not three |
| 5 | legislation.gov.uk, and the inquiry summary | The Mines and Quarries (Tips) Act 1969 is on the statute book and follows the tribunal’s recommendations on the safety of colliery tips. | Supported |
| 6 | UK government inquiry summary | “Lord Robens, the NCB chairman, appeared dramatically in the final days of the Tribunal to give evidence and admitted that the coal board had been at fault.” The summary adds that had he said so at the start, much of the tribunal would have been unnecessary. | Contradicted |
Every row names a specific document and quotes a figure or a sentence from it, which is the first and second criterion. Claim 4 is corrected with the actual number rather than just marked false.
Claim number 4.
This quiz says the public inquiry into Aberfan lasted three days. It did not. The Tribunal of Inquiry was appointed on 26 October 1966 under Sir Herbert Edmund Davies and sat for 76 days. It interviewed 136 witnesses, examined 300 exhibits and heard two and a half million words of evidence, retiring on 28 April 1967 and publishing its report on 3 August 1967. At the time it was the longest inquiry of its type in British history. You can check all of this in the UK government’s own summary document, “The Aberfan Disaster, 21 October 1966”, which is published on gov.uk. The three-day figure matters because it makes the inquiry sound like a formality, when in fact its length and its conclusion — “a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude” — are the reason the law on colliery tips was changed in 1969.
Gives the correct figure, names the document, and explains why the error matters rather than simply scoring a point. It corrects without insulting, which is the fourth criterion.
Claim 3 is the one I cannot fully settle. The sources I have show that the tribunal named those responsible and that the disaster was found to have been preventable, and they show no prosecution or dismissal following it — but an absence in a summary document is not the same as a source stating “nobody was ever prosecuted”. To settle it properly I would need the full tribunal report, and then court and National Coal Board employment records for 1967 to 1970 to show that no charge and no dismissal followed. Until I had those I would write the verdict as “supported by the available sources, and I have not found a source that contradicts it”, which is weaker than “proved”.
Distinguishes “no source says otherwise” from “a source says so”, and states exactly what evidence would close the gap. This is the fifth criterion — ranking and weighing sources rather than collecting them.