In all the discussions of the last ten or so years about the teaching of history in schools, 'A' level history has been largely ignored. Perhaps this is not surprising. Those who have wanted changes have concentrated on the eleven to sixteen agerange, years one to five of the secondary school, where they could hope to make a difference for the largest number of pupils before the majority of them left school and lost all contact with formal education. While it has always been fairly easy to innovate in years one to three because of the absence of public exams, the introduction of mode three courses at CSE and 0 level (courses that are devised by individual schools and submitted to an examination board for approval) has meant that the course can now dictate the exam in year five, and not the other way about. Innovation in history teaching below the sixth form has become a very practical possibility. This may well account for the lack of attention to 'A' level; but I believe that it has really been preserved from criticism and change by a very deeply ingrained frame of thought among teachers in secondary and higher education. In this view the transition from fifth year courses to 'A' level involves a rite of passage to 'real' history. It is a matter of leaving behind childish things and getting down to the serious business of becoming a specialist. The subject is now the thing and the pupil-initiate must learn its ways. Since the pupil is a volunteer the pressure to entertain is off. So is the pressure to simplify. Teacher and pupil can begin to share the complex language of the specialist. For some teachers this is the pay-off for the unrewarding business of teaching history below the sixth form. No-one thinking like this is going to question the principles behind the one secure and worthwhile activity of their professional day. Others may realize that the language of the specialist is difficult to acquire, that the teacher is faced with a formidable problem of mediation between subject and pupil; but there is still the overriding feeling that there is nothing basically wrong with the 'A' level set-up as a whole. It is seen as the gateway to the complex world of the professional historian, the gateway to the subject as it is studied at the university. Difficulties in passing through it must be faced, and for some, regrettably, they will be insuperable. To view the 'A' level course except in terms of university history, to think of it independently, or even as a continuation of methods and approaches used in the new fifth year courses is seen as a betrayal of a responsibility to both subject and pupil. History at 'A' level is real in a way that it has not been before. My argument is that history at 'A' level is unreal and that it is neither an adequate training for the would-be university specialist nor a constructive educational experience in itself. The conceptual view that links it to the subject studied at university and which considers 'A' level studies real and valid in the light of this connection is precisely the view which consigns 'A' level to a realm of total artificiality. Billed as an apprentice, the 'A' level historian is merely a mimic. The root of the problem is the way in which history has been perceived. For a long time historical knowledge has been seen in terms of a hierarchy, with the university subject at its apex and the school subject ranged beneath it in various levels, gradually reduced in complexity yet viewed in basically the same terms.