History at Ousedale School

Welcome to the History Department!

The History Department is a successful and popular department within school.  All students follow the National Curriculum Programme of Study during years 7, 8 and year 9.  Students can then opt to continue the study of History to GCSE level, following the OCR Modern World History Syllabus.  Recruitment of students on to the GCSE course is healthy and we also seem to engender a sense of loyalty and trust from students, with continued recruitment on to all 3 of the department’s A level subjects (History, Sociology and Politics).  Much of this loyalty and trust can be attributed to the success of the department in delivering student - centred learning activities, the innovative approach to teaching, learning and assessment, and the engaging nature of the material.  The department actively promotes the ethos that ‘History is Fun!’  Furthermore, exam results also exceed the school’s overall achievement at GCSE and at A level.

The aims of the History Department

It is the principal aim of the History department to change the world through our students!  We seek to encourage a passion for History and to do so in as enjoyable manner as possible.  We firmly believe that the past holds an innate fascination to our students, and that History should always be fun.

We endeavour to:

• Encourage students to explore historical, political and social issues
• Enable students to develop their knowledge and understanding of historical, political and social issues
• Enable students to develop their skills of interpretation, evaluation and analysis
• Encourage students to think critically about information they receive in all aspects of their life
• Develop the self  esteem of all our students
• Meet the needs of all our students

To enable this we will:

• Produce interesting and challenging schemes of work
• Encourage a variety of teaching and learning styles
• Encourage students to make links between their knowledge of the past and the world today
• Encourage students to apply their historical skills to the past and the present
• To ensure that students have the opportunity to access a diverse range of resources
• Encourage a feeling of success and actively promote self - esteem
• Provide a safe and secure environment where students can express their views without fear of prejudice or ridicule