Our Key Stage 3 curriculum is planned around the question: “What mattered to people in the past?” When pupils start St John Henry Newman Catholic School, we begin to explore medieval and early modern British history. What mattered to people in this period was primarily where their next meal was coming from. As time progressed, we move into religion becoming more important and finally move into the rise of political interest with the English Civil War. Moving on, we then explore how Britain became part of a global community in the Victorian and modern periods. We look at the rise of politics and protest with a focus on rights for different groups of people. We aim to help pupils to understand a diverse range of history so that they can understand the world around them today. We firmly believe our curriculum should be both a mirror of our school community and a window to other cultures, both past and present.

Pupils will be provided with a knowledge organiser and for each unit to allow pupils to begin to explore history for themselves. Homework each week will be to learn the facts on the knowledge organiser for a weekly knowledge test. Additionally, there will be one written piece of homework per unit, our 'Meanwhile Elsewhere' worksheets, allowing pupils to investigate the history of other countries and diverse populations.

In KS3 pupils will study:

• Why is 1066 significant?
• How 'measly' were the Middle Ages?
• How important was medieval religion? In Britain and in the Middle East
• Why did the Crusades happen?
• What was life like in the Kingdom of Mali?
• How did Tudor religious changes impact the people of England?
• Was the world "turned upside down" by the English Civil War?
• How did the Industrial Revolution impact people's working lives?
• To what extent did abolition solve the problems created by the trade in enslaved people?
• How significant were the Suffragettes?
• How did colonisation and decolonisation affect India?
• What was the biggest problem facing soldiers on the Western Front?
• Why did World War One start and end?
• What were the key turning points of World War Two?
• The Holocaust
• What can the story of Berlin reveal about the Cold War?
• How did the Romans impact health in Britain? Bridging unit to our GCSE content

This course should give pupils a broad range of knowledge through engaging topics and dynamic teaching. It aims to develop the pupils’ enquiry skills to understand cause and consequence; significance; and change and continuity. Source evaluation and knowledge recall are strengthened components of the exams so pupils will get a lot of practice with these.

There are 3 units to the A-level:

• The Tudors: England 1485-1603
• Democracy and Nazism: Germany, 1918-1945
• Non-examined assessment (NEA): Suffrage and/or women's rights in the 19th and 20th centuries

We have chosen a broad range of topics to give pupils experience of multiple time periods which will provide a broad basis if pupils decide to carry on their study of history to degree level. In the past, the NEA may have been called coursework. Pupils select a question from within the assigned topic, covering a 100 year period, and spend time independently researching and writing a 4000 word essay analysing a key issue. This is on par with first year university work and requires dedication and commitment to working independently. Pupils can choose to focus on suffrage protests from 1819 to 1928 bringing in the Peterloo Massacre, protests for working men's suffrage, Chartism, and protests for women's suffrage including the Suffragists and Suffragettes. Alternatively, they can choose to focus on women's rights from 1866 to 1970 beginning with the rise of the suffrage movements, campaigns for marriage and family laws, women's work in World War One and Two, strikes such as the Matchgirls and Dagenham Factory Strike, leading up to the 1970 Equal Pay Act.