The History department is a lively and enthusiastic department always looking for fun new ways to inspire our students.  Our success can be measured by the large numbers of girls who choose to take History for GCSE and A-Level and our results have improved year on year.  Every year a number of girls also choose to study History at University.  Recent destinations have included Cambridge, St Andrews, Birmingham, Exeter, Royal Holloway, Southampton and Swansea.

Our aims are to teach girls, at whatever level they are studying, key historical skills which they can take away with them and use throughout their lives. 

We teach them:
• to analyse Historical evidence, thereby developing their analytical minds. • Different interpretations of Historical events, enabling them to understand that different people can see the same event in different ways.
• Historical enquiry, teaching them to question and not to take things at face value.
• Historical empathy, enabling them to put themselves into other people’s situations.
• Historical knowledge and understanding, training their minds to memorise facts and making them more cultured and educated people.
    
As History is such a vast subject, we try to give the girls a good grounding in British History before we move on to World History. 

Year 7- We spend the autumn term studying the Anglo Saxons.  In the spring and summer terms we move on to studying the Norman Conquest and Norman England.
Year 8- We spend most of the year studying the Tudors.  In the summer term, we look at the Stuarts with a particular focus on the Civil War. 
Year 9- We move on to studying World History.  We focus on America beginning by studying the Native Americans.  Following this, we look at Colonial America and the War of Independence.  The second term focuses upon black slavery, including the American Civil War and later moving on to the Civil Rights movement.  In the summer term, we study key events in twentieth century History including The Empire, The Russian Revolution and World War Two which incorporates the Holocaust.

GCSE
We study the OCR Modern World specification.  This is examined through a combination of coursework (25%) and examination.  The coursework focuses on the Western Front during World War One.  Paper 1 is a more traditional History paper and examines the Peace Treaties after World War One; the League of Nations; the Weimar Republic; the rise of the Nazis; life in Nazi Germany and the causes of World War Two.  Paper 2 is a paper that tests skills of analysis using sources to examine the British History topics of the Liberal Reforms, the Suffrage Movement and the Home Front during World War One.
 
Educational Visits
We believe that a key part of learning History is experiencing it for yourself.  We therefore take the girls on a wide range of trips which we believe bring History to life.

Year 7 go to Lewes Castle on a ‘Medieval Experience’.  They also go on a cross curricular trip with Geography during which they visit a Norman Cathedral in Winchester.
Year 8 go to Hampton Court.
Year 9 go to the American Museum in Bath.
Year 10 visit the Somme battlefields.
Year 11 visit the Imperial War Museum