Here at Oak Tree Primary School, we value history education right from those early foundations in EYFS, through to the end of Key Stage 2. We understand how history at primary level enables children to gain knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It allows us to explore and understand the process of change, the complexity of people’s lives, the diversity of societies and the relationships between different groups. It also enables our pupils to understand their own identity and the society we live in today.

Our history curriculum allows our children to ask perceptive questions, think critically, evaluate evidence and examine arguments. It also allows children to develop their cultural capital. Purposeful and natural links to British Values, being good UK and global citizens and the 9 Protected Characteristics are threaded throughout our curriculum. It promotes the rich diversity of both the wider world and Britain as a whole, as well as ensuring our children develop an appreciation of our local history.

National Curriculum

The national curriculum for history aims to ensure that all pupils:

• know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
• know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind
• gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
• understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
• understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
• gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.