Theological Underpinning 

The events of the Bible encompass the histories of nations, kingdoms and empires. However, History is too often the narrative of people doing wrong in God’s name. As Christians trying to live by Jesus’ example, we must learn about the Holocaust, the violence in the Holy Land to this day, the Troubles in Northern Ireland and so many more situations, to understand how things have gone so wrong. Part of Christian life is to repent for our sins, knowing that Jesus died for us to save us from our sins. Understanding the past, even our sometimes small part in it, is key to accounting for our previous actions and making wise decisions in future.

NC Programme of Study Aims

Aims The national curriculum for history aims to ensure that all pupils: 

• know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world 
• know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind 
• gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’ 
• understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses 
• understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
• gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales. 

Curriculum 

At All Saints’ we hope to inspire the children through our History teaching to be curious about the past and the way it affects our lives today. We aim to give the children a greater understanding of the World they live in and its History. Our aim is for them is to use this knowledge to have better informed values and attitudes. We endeavour to deepen our pupils’ understanding of people in other societies, religions, and cultures and countries, as well as their own. We teach history skills progressively from Nursery to Y6 so that the children are able to find evidence, weigh it up and reach their own conclusions. History skills are taught in line with the new curriculum and through the current class topic.

The children’s knowledge is enhanced by many school trips to places of historical interest as a well as drama workshops and themed historical days. Many classes have deepened their understanding of the period of history that they are studying with virtual reality headset workshops. 

We are very aware of the need to represent all cultures in our History coverage and in addition to Black History month we provide opportunities for Black History to be studied across the year in all year groups.  In the past  children have entered and been prize winners in the ' Wandsworth Heritage Award'.