WHAT ARE THE AIMS OF THE NEW NATIONAL CURRICULUM FOR PRIMARY HISTORY?

According to the government, there are 6 main areas of knowledge that primary school students should have surrounding the subject of history. These aims are far-reaching and varied, and are kept in mid by teachers when covering history. The aims are:

• Pupils should begin to gain a picture of British history as a narrative as a whole, and appreciate the huge change that the country has gone through from ancient times to modern times.
• Pupils should begin to think about how Britain has been affected by other places in the world, and how Britain in turn has affected these places.
• Pupils should develop a ‘wide historical vocabulary’, getting to grips with wide concepts such as ‘society’ and ‘civilisation’.
• Similarly, pupils should be introduced to wide historical concepts such as ‘continuity’ and ‘change’, exploring ideas such as ‘cause’ and ‘consequence’, and the ‘significance’ of certain events compared to others.
• Pupils should start making their own connections between events, as well as noticing contrasts and irregularities by themselves. This will include looking at ‘historical trends’, and writing their own accounts of events.
• Pupils will be taught the necessity of putting forward evidence when giving an opinion about history. They will also be introduced to the reasons why some people make different historical conclusions when looking at the same event.
• Pupils will be introduced to the idea of historical perspective, and learn about why contexts such as politics, social conditions, the economy, and religion are so important when looking at history.