National Curriculum in England
Purpose of study
A high-quality history education 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. Teaching should equip 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.
National Curriculum 2014
History at Birchensale
The aim of history teaching at Birchensale is to stimulate the children’s interest and facilitate their understanding about the life of people who lived in the past – their actions, their motives and their environment.
We teach children a sense of chronology, and through this they develop a sense of identity and a cultural understanding based on their historical heritage. We enable children to understand how events in the past influence our present lives; we also encourage them to question, investigate and analyse these past events and by doing so develop the personal skills of enquiry, analysis, interpretation and problem solving.
To enhance the children’s learning experience in history they are given the opportunity to visit historic sites and museums, and have theatre groups come to the school to re-enact significant characters and events from history, bringing the subject to life and increasing their appreciation, understanding and engagement.
Assessment at Birchensale
With the new National Curriculum Framework, which was introduced in September 2014, the Department for Education also announced the removal of levels. The government had realised when they developed the new national curriculum that levels “…were not sufficiently aligned with its content, aims and ethos.”
We have developed an assessment monitoring system which is rigorous and consistent in our approach to assessing key stage 2 students’ progress.
The assessment table for KS2: Year 5 and 6 is downloadable in the attachments.