Every KS3 history textbook has a 'primary sources' page. Most of them are bad. They tend to be either too dense (a paragraph of Latinate prose from a medieval chronicle that even a confident Year 8 will fail to extract anything from) or too sanitised (a single sentence in modern English that gives away its conclusion). Either way, the student does the source-analysis question wrong because the source itself wasn't doing useful work.

Prof Harari's job in source work is curation first, technique second. The technique is well-known and not controversial; what matters is picking the right source to apply it to.

The technique: NOP

Before the curation, the framework. For any primary source, three questions:

  • N — Nature. What kind of source is this? A letter, a law, a chronicle, a painting, a treaty, a coin, a newspaper, a propaganda poster?
  • O — Origin. Who made it? When? Where? In what context?
  • P — Purpose. Why did they make it? Who was the intended audience? What were they trying to achieve?

That's it. Three questions, applied to every source. The student writes the answers, then uses them to evaluate what the source can tell us and what it can't.

Once NOP is in the student's head — usually after three or four sessions — Harari can give them an unseen source and ask "what does this show? what does it not show?" and the answer comes naturally. That's the goal.

Harari's curation rules

If NOP is the technique, curation is choosing sources where NOP works. A good source for a KS3 session has roughly the following properties.

Rule 1: Two or three inferences from a single reading

The student should be able to extract two or three useful inferences from the source on the first careful read. Not ten — that's overwhelming. Not one — that's too thin. Two or three forces interpretation without drowning the student.

Example: a short extract from a Norman chronicle praising William's mercy. A student can infer: this was written for a Norman audience (since it's flattering); the writer wants to legitimise Norman rule; "mercy" might mean something different to the writer than to a modern reader. Three inferences, none of which require an expert.

Rule 2: Reading level appropriate, or scaffolded

Year 7 to 9 reading levels vary a lot. Harari uses modernised translations of medieval and early modern sources by default. Where a source has to stay in its original language for a reason (an Industrial Revolution-era account, say), he reads through it slowly with the student and unpacks vocabulary on the way.

The standard pitfall to avoid: a source that the student can read but can't understand because the historical context is missing. Sometimes the language is the wall; sometimes the wall is "what is a steward and why does it matter that he's the one writing this?" Harari watches for both.

Rule 3: Bias is welcome, even useful

A "neutral" source is a fiction. Every source has a creator, a context, and a purpose. Harari deliberately picks sources where the bias is visible and instructive — a Norman monk's chronicle, a parliamentary speech for a particular side of the Civil War, a Victorian factory inspector's report.

The bias is what makes the source useful for thinking about, rather than just absorbing. A perfectly neutral source would teach the student nothing about historical thinking; a clearly biased source teaches them how to read against the grain.

Rule 4: Pair sources to force comparison

A single source can be analysed; two sources can be compared. Harari often introduces a topic with a pair — the same event seen from two perspectives. Norman vs Anglo-Saxon. Cavalier vs Roundhead. British administrator vs Indian observer.

Comparison is where the real historical-thinking work happens. The student isn't just analysing one piece of evidence; they're asking why two sources disagree and what that disagreement tells us.

Rule 5: Visual sources count

Especially for younger KS3, visual sources are often more accessible than text. The Bayeux Tapestry. Hogarth's prints. Victorian photographs. Suffrage posters. These are full primary sources, and the NOP framework applies to them exactly the same as text. A Year 7 student can often infer more from a careful look at a Tapestry panel than from a translated chronicle.

What this looks like in a session

Say your child has a homework question about the Norman Conquest, and the school has given them a paragraph from a Norman chronicle.

A standard textbook session would summarise the chronicle, hand the summary to the student, and ask them to write a paragraph using it.

A Harari session would, instead, go something like:

  1. Read the source aloud. Slowly. Stop on unfamiliar words.
  2. Establish NOP. Nature: a chronicle, official-style narrative. Origin: a Norman monk, writing somewhere between 1080 and 1100. Purpose: to record and legitimise Norman rule for a Norman audience.
  3. What can it tell us? That the Normans wanted to be seen as restoring order. That they framed themselves as protectors. That the language of legitimacy mattered to them.
  4. What can it NOT tell us? What the English peasants thought. How most ordinary people experienced the Conquest. Whether the "mercy" described was real or rhetorical.
  5. Compare. If a second source exists from an English perspective (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for instance), Harari pulls it in. Where do they agree? Where do they disagree?
  6. The student writes. Now armed with NOP analysis and comparison, the homework paragraph writes itself.

That sequence takes about fifteen to twenty minutes. The student has done genuine source analysis and has a usable paragraph. They've also learned a transferable skill rather than a one-off fact.

When sources don't work

Some KS3 topics don't have good primary sources at Year 7-9 reading level. Pre-1100 sources can be too archaic. Some 20th-century sources are too politically charged for KS3 (e.g. the more difficult Holocaust sources require school-led handling). Harari steers around these consciously — he'll work from secondary accounts and historians' interpretations rather than try to push a difficult source on a student who isn't ready.

This is a curation decision. Schools sometimes feel pressure to use primary sources at every turn because "that's what historians do". For a Year 7, secondary sources used carefully are often better learning material. The skill comes from later.

The Quill connection

Source analysis and literary analysis are siblings. Prof Quill, the English tutor, does very similar work on poems, novels, and non-fiction — same NOP-shape questions: what is it, who wrote it, why? A student who learns it once in history finds it transferable to English (and vice versa). That cross-subject reinforcement is one of the quiet benefits of having the agents share a methodology.

Where to find more good KS3 sources

If you want to extend this kind of work outside Harari sessions, three places worth knowing:

  • The National Archives' education site. Their KS3 source packs are excellent — curated, scaffolded, and free.
  • The British Library learning resources. Heavier on literary and 19th-century material, but the digitised manuscripts are remarkable.
  • The Historical Association's secondary resources. Built for teachers, accessible to engaged parents.

A confident KS3 student who's worked through even a few of these with Harari's framework will have stronger source skills than many GCSE students arrive with.

Jason runs aitutors.me. He has a Year 8 child and about fifteen years of building software adjacent to education. Updated 21 May 2026.