At St John’s Catholic Primary School, we believe that History is an exciting and essential part of the school curriculum and we believe in developing skills which enable our children to become analytical historians. Our curriculum is accessible to all our pupils and we begin learning with what is familiar to them, developing their skills and creating historians.

It is taught with cross-curricular links to embed understanding where possible. We are very fortunate to have so many resources accessible locally and have ensured strong links to our cultural heritage. From a Roman fort just across the field to the Viking name of Burscough, we love throwing ourselves into the past and exploring how we have come to be.

Our children experience History through interactive and stimulating lessons which brings History learning to life, History to us, is making sense of the similarities and vast differences in human experiences across time and place and how the past, and changing accounts of the past, have shaped the identities of diverse people, groups and nations. We follow six themes throughout the key stages which enables our children to not only develop their substantive knowledge of historical events, but their disciplinary knowledge to question and investigate the past. Our themes are: Justice and Equality, Civilisation, Religion/Beliefs, Transport, Migration and Leadership. By revisiting these themes in each class, our children are able to draw a secure knowledge of these concepts repeatedly in a number of different contexts, developing strong historian skills, securing the skills needed to unpick the complex relationship between sources, evidence and historical claims and accounts.

We develop our historian knowledge by developing the analytical skills of; cause and effect, sources and evidence, historical significance, similarities and differences, change and continuity, historical interpretation. These skills help us to interpret the past and apply it to everyday life and also challenge misconceptions. We learn that historians searching for a piece of evidence validate a singular truth about the past. Historical enquiry is delving into the complex relationships between sources, evidence and historical claims and accounts. We are passionate to develop these skills, as history is so much more than learning facts.