At Beechcroft St Paul’s, we believe a high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge, understanding and respect of Britain’s past and that of the wider world; it should inspire childrens’ curiosity to know more about the past and enable them to learn from history. Teaching should equip children to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and wise judgement. History helps children to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time. History provides a window into the world outside children’s lived experiences and is an essential component in the quest to enable children to flourish, offering hope as children see their place and impact in the world around them. We are unapologetically ambitious for our children and ensure that our curriculum drivers of communication, aspiration, spirituality and enrichment are developed as a coherent narrative throughout history teaching.
Aims of the History Curriculum
The national curriculum for history aims to ensure that all pupils:
•know and understand the history of Britain as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
•know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind
•gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
•understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
•understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
•gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.
