In line with Statutory Guidance for Key Stage 3 History, we have developed a curriculum that challenges all pupils to: deepen their chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history. identify significant events, make connections, draw contrasts, and analyse trends within periods and over long arcs of time. use historical terms and concepts in increasingly sophisticated ways.pursue historically valid enquiries including some they have framed themselves, and create relevant, structured and evidentially supported accounts in response.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.

In planning to ensure the progression described above through teaching the British, local and world history outlined below, we combine overview and depth studies to help pupils understand both the long arc of development and the complexity of specific aspects of the content.

The Key Stage 3 curriculum is developed over three years with three hours of taught content per fortnight. In year 7, students are taught in form groups, moving to mixed ability classes in years 8 and 9. Each year is broken down into topics as detailed below.

Year 7                                                  

• In what ways did the Anglo-Saxons change Britannia to create England?
• How can we learn about the experience and contribution of Black people in Britain from the evidence they left behind? Romans
• Why did William win the Battle of Hastings?
  Homework enquiry– 'The wonders of medieval Baghdad’
• In what ways did the Norman conquest change England?
• Why did people in Medieval England build such glorious cathedrals but live in such simple houses?
• Why was Henry II whipped?
  Homework enquiry - What was life like for different people in the Middle Ages?
• What makes a successful medieval monarch? Case study on Edward III
• How did the barons challenge the powers of medieval monarchs in the period 1199-1399?
• Why would China in 1300 be such an interesting place to visit?
  Homework Enquiry - How united was the United Kingdom by 1745? Focus: Wales.
• .How far did the Black Death cause the Peasants’ Revolt?
• Why are medieval wars worth remembering?
• Why did the Wars of the Roses lead to the bloodiest battle on English soil?
  Homework enquiry - the Mali Empire in Africa and Suleiman the Magnificent.
• What were Martin Luther’s ideas and how did they ‘go viral’?
• How far and how fast did religion change under the Tudors?
• End of year review
  Homework enquiry: How can we learn about the experience and contribution of black people in Tudor Britain from the evidence they left behind? 
• What was more important in changing the government of England, 1649 or 1688?
• How united was the United Kingdom by 1745?
  HWK- How united was the United Kingdom by 1745? Focus: Scotland and Ireland.

 

Year 8

• How did Britain encounter new worlds? c.1500-1700

• How did slavery make enslaved Africans unfree?
  HW - What was different about transatlantic slavery?

• What is the story of the abolition of slavery in Britain and its Empire?
  HW -  the American Revolution.

• What was the big story of change in the period c.1750-1900?

• What did the French Revolution achieve?
  HWs - Westward expansion of the USA and the American Civil War

• What were the key steps towards democracy in the period 1800-1900?

• How did women in Britain campaign for the right to vote?
  HW - Suffragette stories

• How did Britain encounter new worlds? c.1700-1914?

• How did the British Empire impact the lives of the people in its Empire?
  HW - How can we learn about the experience and contribution of black people in Britain from the evidence they left behind? Victorian England

• Why did the First World War break out in 1914?

• What was life like as a soldier on the Western Front?
  HW enquiry -  Why did the soldiers carry on fighting during the First World War?

• Why was the First World War so significant?
  HW - War memorial design challenge

• How and why did the Allies win the Second World War?

 

Year 9

• What can the story of Frank Bright and his classmates tell us about the Holocaust?
  Focus - How did the Nazi’s treatment of Jewish people change in the period 1933-45?]

• How did the Second War give way to the Cold War so quickly?
  HW – ‘Big Story’ of the Cold War

• Why did the first decade of Communist rule in China culminate in one of the greatest famines in history?

• What impact did the Cultural Revolution have on China?
  HW - To what extent was East Germany a dictatorship?

• How did tension and conflict change in Palestine and Israel 1919 – 49?
  + the ‘Big Story’ of Arab-Israeli conflict up to the 21st Century
  HW What was the Suez Crisis?

• Why did the British Empire fall?
  Case studies on India, Malaya, Kenya and Hong Kong
  HW - Meanwhile, elsewhere Apartheid in South Africa       

• What remained of the British Empire in Benin?

• Was life in 20th Century Britain simply a story of things getting better?
  HW Interview with family members about life in the 1990s

• How can we learn about the experience and contribution of black people in Britain from the evidence they left behind? From Windrush to Modern Day

• How did Black Americans campaign for Civil Rights?

• Why did Britain get involved in so many  overseas conflicts 1914-present?

• How did the United Kingdom develop in the period 1795 – Modern Day?
  HW - Britain and overseas conflicts – case studies

   

GCSE History Examination Board – AQA  

The course comprises two written exams.