History
February 2025
Introduction
Article 13 (freedom of expression) Every child must be free to express their thoughts and opinions and to access all kinds of information, as long as it is within the law.
- Article 14 (freedom of thought, belief and religion) Every child has the right to think and believe what they choose and also to practise their religion, as long as they are not stopping other people from enjoying their rights.
- Article 17 (access to information from the media) Every child has the right to reliable information from a variety of sources, and governments should encourage the media to provide information that children can understand. Governments must help protect children from materials that could harm them.
- Article 28 (right to education) Every child has the right to an education. Primary education must be free and different forms of secondary education must be available to every child.
- Article 29 (goals of education) Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full. It must encourage the child’s respect for human rights, as well as respect for their parents, their own and other cultures, and the environment.
History fires pupils’ curiosity about the past in Britain and the wider world. Pupils consider how the past influences the present, what past societies were like, how these societies organised their politics, and what beliefs and cultures influenced people's actions. As they do this, pupils develop a chronological framework for their knowledge of significant events and people. History teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments and develop perspective and judgement. History helps us to understand the complexities of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as our own identity within modern Britain.
Intent
Our objectives in the teaching of history are:
- To enable children to remember and talk about significant events in their own experiences.
- To enable children to recognise and describe special times or events for their family or friends.
- To enable children to talk about past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of other family members.
- To give children the opportunity to experience some of these skills through play, stories and discussion.
- To teach children about changes in home and national life within living memory.
- To teach children about significant events beyond living memory that are nationally or globally significant e.g. Great Fire of London.
- To teach children about significant events commemorated through festivals or anniversaries.
- To teach children about the lives of significant individuals in the past who contributed to national or international achievements.
- To develop children’s understanding about aspects of life in different periods of history.
- To teach children about significant historical events, people and places in their own locality.
- To enable children to develop their chronological understanding of events and objects.
- To develop children’s use of common words and phrases relating to the passing of time.
- To develop children’s knowledge and understanding of why people did things, why events happened and what happened as a result.
- To enable children to identify differences between ways of life at different times.
- To enable children to identify different ways in which the past is represented.
- To support children to find out about the past from a range of sources of information including first hand visits, ICT and libraries, and to answer questions about the past.
- To enable children to communicate their historical understanding in a variety of ways.