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Barclay Academy

Barclay Academy

History

Head of Department: Mrs Forsdyke

KS3

Key Stage 3 students at Barclay Academy study a rigorous historical curriculum, specially designed by our sponsor, Future Academies. This scheme of study has been built around a core structure of historical knowledge and disciplinary concepts that students will utilise at Key Stage 3, GCSE and beyond. Using a chronological framework, students explore not just British history, but also global history, such as the Holocaust, the American and French Revolutions and the Islamic Golden Age. At the end of Year 9, we hope that students will have fostered a passion for the subject, and we expect them to have developed a wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge of the last thousand years of history, both of their local area and of the wider world. In Year 7, students study the development of England, exploring how it developed from an insignificant Roman colony into a European power. They will explore medieval kingship, warfare, revolt and development up until the Wars of the Roses and the start of the early modern period. In Year 8, students begin with a ‘breadth study’ focusing on sanitation through time, before delving into the Stuarts and the Civil War, evaluating why France and America had revolutions but England did not. The year culminates with an evaluation of the successes and failures of the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire.

KS4

At Barclay Academy, GCSE students follow the AQA specification for history. Students have the opportunity to study a depth and breadth of historical periods and topics: modules studied include ‘Health and People from 1000 to the present day’, ‘Germany between 1890-1945’, ‘Conflict and Tension in the inter-war years of 1918-1939’ and ‘Elizabethan England c. 1568- 1603’. Such a broad range of study gives students the ability to see the broader path of chronology, to understand history on both the larger and smaller scale, and to use evidence to analyse critically the significance of key moments in human history. Overall, students will finish the course with a firm understanding of how our modern world has been influenced and shaped by our past. Students will have the chance to experience history in action, participating in our annual and very popular residential trip to Berlin.

KS5

At A-Level, we follow the OCR specification. This exciting course offers a similarly broad and balanced selection of historical topics and periods, with students building upon their Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 knowledge and processed through the exploration of such topics as ‘Henry VII and the Tudor dynasty’, ‘Democracy and Dictatorship in Germany, 1919-1963’, and the ‘16th - 17th Centuries ‘Witch Craze’ and Popular Culture’. In the latter, students will undertake three depth studies, in which they will consider sources relating to Germany, Matthew Hopkins and the Essex Witch Hunts, and Salem. They will use their knowledge of this period to inform their source analysis and to critically analyse two historical interpretations. Students will also have the opportunity to carry out a 4,000 word historical investigation around a topic of their own choice, developing their ability to research and plan a piece of persuasive and well-informed extended writing.

 

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