History
CONTEXT
The History curriculum at Fairfield High School for Girls is designed to inspire and equip our young women with the knowledge, skills and understanding that allow them to compete in the global community. It will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Our teaching encourages pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils 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.
CURRICULUM
The History curriculum is designed so that pupils in History can extend and deepen their chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, so that it provides a well-informed hinterland (context for wider knowledge and learning) and deep understanding of History. Pupils should be able to identify significant events, make connections, draw contrasts, and analyse trends within periods and over long arcs of time. They should use historical terms and concepts in increasingly sophisticated ways. They should pursue historically valid enquiries including some they have framed themselves, and create relevant, structured and evidentially supported accounts in response. They should understand how different types of historical sources are used rigorously to make historical claims and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed.
The KS3 and KS4 curriculum is also designed to give pupils the substantive knowledge (the knowledge about the past) and disciplinary knowledge (the knowledge about how historians study the past) to fully understand and embrace historical change and significance through a broad spectrum of time. Throughout KS3 and KS4 History pupils are assessed using the criteria explained below:
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the key features and characteristics of the periods studied. (AO1)
- Explain and analyse historical events and periods studied using second-order historical concepts. (AO2)
- Analyse, evaluate and use sources (contemporary to the period) to make substantiated judgements, in the context of historical events studied. (AO3)
- Analyse, evaluate and make judgements about interpretations (including how and why interpretations may differ) in the context of historical events studied. (AO4)
