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History

Learning history is important at St. Paul’s as we believe inspiring learning about the past will help our pupils reflect on their own lives in the present. We want to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. We believe our teaching of history should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.

We believe high quality teaching of history will help pupils gain an understanding of the modern world. It will help 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.

We will articulate our school values of compassion, hope, trust, wisdom, perseverance and respect. We believe the values of respect, wisdom and compassion are particularly relevant in the history curriculum so that children can learn from the past in order to understand global issues related to the present. 

At St. Paul’s we believe an enquiry approach to the teaching of history is fundamental. Each history unit has key questions which need to be researched and then answered during the course of a unit. As the children progress, more emphasis is placed on independent enquiry. In each year group children are taught important enquiry skills so that by the time they reach Year 6, they are given the opportunities to frame their own enquiries about particular topics of interest.