History

Intent for History

We want our children to be curious about the past and confident in asking questions of it. We study people whose curiosity and persistence changed the world — among them the scientists, engineers and inventors our school is named for — because we want our children to know that ordinary people have shaped history, and that they can too. We also want history to belong to them, so that every child sees something of themselves and their own community in the story they are learning.

Following the aims of the national curriculum, we build our children's knowledge of Britain's past and of the wider world in a clear order, so they always know where a period sits in time. They study their own locality alongside a range of societies and cultures, and they learn to think with the ideas historians use: what changed and what stayed the same, what caused something to happen and what followed from it, and why some people and events matter.

Implementation

We teach children to think like historians — to weigh evidence, to recognise that accounts of the past are constructed and can differ, and to ask historically valid questions rather than accept a single story. 

Our children study people whose curiosity and persistence changed the world, including the scientists, engineers and inventors who give our school its name, so that history reinforces the high aspirations at the heart of our vision. 

EYFS Implementation

In Reception, history is taught through the Understanding the World area of the Early Years Foundation Stage, and specifically through Past and Present. 

Children talk about the lives of the people around them and the roles those people play in the community, and they begin to notice similarities and differences between now and then — in homes, clothing, toys, transport and family life — drawing on their own experiences and on what has been read to them. 

Stories, non-fiction texts and photographs are central: children encounter the past through settings, characters and events in books shared in class, and through visitors, artefacts and role play.

 Adults introduce and model the early language of time — now, then, before, a long time ago, older, newer — which gives children the vocabulary they need to begin ordering events in Key Stage 1.

KS1 Implementation

In Key Stage 1, pupils begin to build a secure sense of chronology, placing events and people on a timeline and using common words and phrases relating to the passing of time. 

They study changes within living memory, using these to reveal wider changes in national life, and events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally. They learn about the lives of significant individuals from the past whose achievements shaped national and international life, comparing aspects of life in different periods through them. 

Throughout, children work with sources — photographs, objects, maps, first-hand accounts — and are taught to ask and answer questions, choosing and using parts of a source to show that they know and understand key features of events.

KS2 Implementation

In Key Stage 2, pupils build a chronological narrative of British history from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, through the Roman Empire and its impact on Britain, the Anglo-Saxon and Scots settlement, and the Viking struggle for the Kingdom of England. 

Their view of the wider world is developed through the achievements of the earliest civilisations, a depth study of Ancient Greece and its influence on the Western world, and a non-European society that provides a contrast with British history. 

Impact for History

Our children become historians. They can place events in time, weigh evidence, and explain the past in their own words — and they leave us with high aspirations for what they might change themselves.

whole school curriculum maps social sciences 1 .pdf