History GCSE

The aims and objectives of this qualification are to enable students to:

• develop and extend their knowledge and understanding of specified key events, periods and societies in local, British, and wider world history; and of the wide diversity of human experience

• engage in historical enquiry to develop as independent learners and as critical and reflective thinkers

• develop the ability to ask relevant questions about the past, to investigate issues critically and to make valid historical claims by using a range of sources in their historical context

• develop an awareness of why people, events and developments have been accorded historical significance and how and why different interpretations have been constructed about them

• organise and communicate their historical knowledge and understanding in different ways and reach substantiated conclusions.

There are 3 written exam papers covering 4 units of study.  The areas studied are:

• Migrants in Britain, c800 – the present (inc. an environment study of Notting Hill 1948-70)

• Early Elizabethan England, 1558–88

• The American West, 1835-1895

• Weimar and Nazi Germany, 1918 -1939

Builds on Key Stage 3 – we have designed the GCSE to extend students’ knowledge by studying new areas of content and by revisiting and deepening their knowledge of content studied previously.

Supports progression to A Level – we have planned our Key Stage 3, GCSE and A Level curriculum together. This ensures sensible progression of content from GCSE to A Level and similar approaches to assessment, so that students will have a coherent and diverse experience of history if they take both GCSE and A Level.

The History GCSE assesses students on their ability to explain events in the past and make judgements on their significance; students do this through extended written answers and so we prepare for this through a variety of activities which involve reading and writing. There is also now a greater emphasis on spelling and grammar in the course and this forms part of the assessment in the final examinations.

Further information is available from Mrs C Hurdwell.