History
The History department at KS understands the importance of the ‘story’ element to History, whether a young child listening to the legend of King Arthur burning the cakes, or an older child discovering that Stalin airbrushed Trotsky out of photographs, backed up by a firm structure of time frames and dates. Story-telling is the foundation to promoting an interest in and understanding of the past, whether personal or familial, or that of wider societies. Learning about, retelling and interpreting what they find gives pupils the opportunity to develop the core skills of independent thinking and well-ordered analysis as they mature.
With this in mind, the History department aims to introduce pupils to significant elements of their cultural heritage, alongside or as well as a firm grounding in the History of Britain. The department draws upon and supports the development of literacy, numeracy and ICT skills at all levels, but naturally encompasses areas throughout the curriculum in the planned schemes of work. The department promotes the use of historical sources of all kinds which ‘tell their own stories’ – diaries, photographs, pictures, castles museums or cathedrals - in order to help pupils develop their own enthusiasm for the subject and responses to it, as well as providing the necessary detail which culminates in thorough preparation for Common Entrance at 13+.
The courses taught broadly follow the UK National Curriculum for History, but with a greater application of chronology so that pupils have a clear understanding of the historical periods, so better to ‘place’ material they are encountering, analyse and judge its relative importance. The structure and solid content of the History we study allows pupils to better put in context and understand the sources they consider. Again, this supports the higher level History skills required at Common Entrance, where pupils are encouraged to consider draw parallels with modern life and recognise how society can learn from the mistakes of the past. Naturally, current affairs are an integral element in learning History since so much of today’s vital questions are rooted in the actions of the past.
For Common Entrance, pupils study British History 1066-1485. As well as assimulating the necessary detail, pupils learn the skills of working on historical essays and answering different questions on historical sources.