History
Our History curriculum ensures that all students are exposed to a wealth of knowledge of British and world history, and ensures that pupils can develop and deploy historical skills to help them understand the diverse world around them.
The History curriculum is deliberately sequenced to develop students' understanding of chronology, enabling them to build a coherent narrative of Britain and the wider world over time. In Year 7, students study medieval civilisations. In Year 8, they progress through the Early Modern period to the Industrial Revolution, exploring Britain's transformation and growing global influence. In Year 9, students examine the modern world, studying Britain's place within an increasingly interconnected global history. Throughout the curriculum, a spiral approach ensures that key first-order concepts, including power and authority, empire, civilisation, migration, conflict and society, are revisited in increasingly complex contexts. Disciplinary knowledge is also carefully sequenced, enabling students to develop their understanding of the second-order concepts of causation, change and continuity, similarity and difference, significance, and interpretations. Students progressively strengthen their ability to analyse sources, evaluate interpretations and construct well-supported historical judgements.
We teach our students what it means to be an historian. We teach the second order concepts (for example chronology, change and continuity, causation and consequence, significance, similarity and difference, and source and interpretation analysis) in a consistent way, ensuring students have plenty of time and practice to develop these skills in their writing and oracy. History is about uncovering truth. Through exposure to historical sources and interpretations, the analytical skills that develop over the course of the curriculum help students assess truth, accuracy and value from their perspective and that of others.
Our history curriculum builds our students’ cultural capital. By linking history to the modern day, students can begin to understand why the world is the way it is.