Dr R Mills - Humanities Area Coordinator
Mrs J Heskith - Head of History
Mrs L Kavanagh/Mrs S Thrower - Humanities Curriculum Assistant

At SWCHS we have developed a broad and engaging curriculum that challenges students to:

• deepen their chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history.
• identify significant events, make connections, draw contrasts, and analyse trends within periods and over long arcs of time.
• use historical terms and concepts in increasingly sophisticated ways.
• pursue historically valid enquiries including some they have framed themselves, and create relevant, structured and evidentially supported accounts in response.
• understand how different types of historical sources are used rigorously to make historical claims and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed.

The History Department has constructed a curriculum which helps students have knowledge of significant developments in the past and to understand contemporary issues in the 21st Century. We push students to develop a rich understanding of different periods and to analyse changes over time such as the development of democracy and the rule of law, economic and social change, the causes of conflict etc.

History teachers at SWCHS have worked hard to develop lessons and resources which are engaging and exciting and challenge students to think in very sophisticated ways about the past. We encourage and support independent and collaborative learning in the classroom and promote curiosity and debate. We also push students to tackle extended reading and extended writing – a pursuit which we believe is fundamental in developing their skills and dispositions across the curriculum.