Vision for History at The Wilnecote School

1. Students should develop a love of history based round the key ideas of investigating why events occur and “arguing” about the significance/importance of events/causes/consequences. They should understand that there is often no right answer to the big questions of history!

 

2. Students should be inspired by grappling with genuine historical controversies (eg Davison: accident or suicide? Who was Jack the Ripper? Who was most to blame for Becket’s death?)

 

3. Students should have a sense of a broad chronological sweep of history and where key events fit into it.

 

4. Students should be able to analyse topics in depth and compare themes over time.

 

5. Students should understand some broad concepts – why people are used as scapegoats/persecution, dictatorship and its effects, democracy and the struggle for it, resistance and the fight for rights, government, empire, church and state.

 

6. Students should practise and build key historical skills – analysis, argument, assessing interpretations, inference, explaining change – building and revisiting at KS3 the skills that are fundamental to studying History (and which naturally, therefore, are also key at GCSE).

 

The curriculum has been designed with these core aims in mind. The starting point was the National Curriculum and Edexcel schemes but several key factors influenced the choice within this;

 

1. The desire to balance depth with breadth. Whilst the NC has considerable breadth, a course that taught all that is mentioned within it would sacrifice depth. We want our students not only to get a feel for a broad chronological sweep but also have the opportunity to analyse in depth so their history does not become too superficial and they can benefit from the subject specialism which a secondary school has.

 

2. The desire to balance social/economic history with political – not all historians like/specialise in all types of history and the same is true of students. To make our course accessible and interesting to all we wanted to balance the types of history taught so there is “something for everyone”. In year 7 for example the more political Becket topic is balanced by the more social crime unit and the GCSE units have a mix of both (eg Cold War heavily political, Medicine more social). Equally we aim to balance British History with World History (African Kingdoms, Transatlantic Slave Trade, Nazi Germany).

 

3. Building on KS2. A few years ago we adapted the start of year 7 to reflect the fact that the Norman Conquest was largely being taught at our main feeder schools. Instead, we chose to focus on how William I took control after Hastings. However, it is now clear from changes in primary school curricula that students are no longer studying Hastings and so no longer have the background necessary for a unit on how William took control. Therefore, from September 2026 we are returning to a unit on the Norman Conquest, exploring the different “candidates” for the crown in 1066 and why William won the Battle of Hastings. This retains the focus on the core historical skill of “causation” which is so central to the skills the department wishes to develop.

 

4. We aim not to repeat topics in KS3 that are taught in KS4. This is why in the Reformation topic there is little in depth on Elizabeth I, who is covered at GCSE. Likewise, our depth study at KS4 is USA: conflict at home and abroad because we do not want to repeat KS3 work on Nazi Germany. QCA reported in 2005 on its concern about the “Hitlerisation” of History in English secondary schools and we are keen to avoid this by ensuring we do not repeat this topic so that there is every opportunity to study as broad a selection of topics as the KS3 NC and Edexcel exam requirements allow. This allows for a breadth of experience rather than a narrow focus/obsession with repeating topics just to ensure grades. The teaching of the Cold War ensures that Germany beyond the Nazis is also considered.

 

5. Certain topics were felt to be non-negotiables either because of their pivotal importance in British/world history (eg Industrial Revolution/fight against Nazism) or because of their cultural significance in understanding our modern, multi-cultural world (eg slavery – see below point 6). This also means that certain underlying themes are revisited: Empire (slavery, causes of WWI), resistance (slavery Nazism), fight for rights/importance of the vote (Women’s suffrage, Public Health in 19^th Century, Black civil rights) and persecution/intolerance (heresy, witchcraft, black civil rights). There are also opportunities to support the topics in the other Humanities subjects and beyond (eg The Nazi Germany unit supports the RE Holocaust topic by providing a broader historical context, The WWI topic and Black civil rights can both be used in discussions in RE ethics units, The industrial Revolution overview supports the Geography topic on Urbanisation, the witchcraze helps the English department in their teaching of Macbeth).

 

6. Potentially controversial and sensitive issues like the Transatlantic slave trade (TAST) need teaching carefully. A course on the teaching of TAST run jointly by Balliol college Oxford and the Museum of the American Revolution Philadelphia in the summer of 2023 led to a redesign of our scheme. In particular the key principles laid out by Abdul Mohammed and Robin Whitburn (Justice 2 History) enabled the department to evaluate and then redesign the TAST scheme to ensure more prominence for black voices (both from the time and historians), more coverage of slave resistance and a consideration of legacy. Work by Dr Peggy Brunache and Christine Whyte at Glasgow University contributed to the sections on resistance, especially from a cultural perspective. The course also convinced the department that it was not sufficient to just start with TAST in year 8 without some prior context of African society before the trade. This has led to the development of an African Kingdoms unit in year 7 which both provides this context as well as introducing wider world history to an otherwise British-centric year 7 scheme. Links with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford have helped with the development of this unit by introducing what students can learn from artefacts.

 

7. Underpinning all of this are the core skills of History – the ability to analyse, evaluate and argue – that make History a valued academic subject post-18. These core skills are fundamental to the study of history at GCSE and beyond, which is why point 6 in the curriculum intent is so important and why we aim to build many of these skills across KS3 and into KS4 – see the mapping below. By revisiting skills, we aim over time to embed certain skills by giving opportunities to overlearn and practise them (both within some schemes and across schemes/years) – a principle highlighted by the research of Rosenshine and emphasised by Tom Sherrington in his 2019 book “Rosenshine’s Principles in Action” (this has also been a focus of previous staff CPD).

 

The department’s next step is to now review how our curriculum builds in practice, refining assessments where needed as skills are practised and ensuring that they do build effectively as we have planned. We also need to consider how to introduce/teach/refer to the broader cultural concepts and themes so that are more explicitly revisited.