History is our attempt to understand and explain the past. It is essentially the study of human experience, whether of great figures or the masses, and deals with human motivations and aspirations, triumphs and disasters. As such, History is a wide-ranging academic discipline which at A-level tries to foster a deeper awareness of factors which affect the course of human affairs, be they religious or cultural, political or philosophical, social or economic. Through the choice of topics studied and the methods by which the course is delivered we aim to develop the students’ interest in and enthusiasm for History. The four units of study in this OCR course are:

Unit One: Britain 1930-1997 (including an enquiry topic on Winston Churchill 1930-1951)

Unit Two: Democracy and dictatorships in Germany 1919-1963

Unit Three: The Changing Nature of Warfare 1792-1945

Unit Four: Topic-based essay

Through wide reading, the discipline of essay writing and documentary analysis, students develop the ability to construct relevant, coherent, well-reasoned arguments, together with the capacity to handle complex issues in a meaningful way. You develop a discriminatory eye for detail as you learn to explore texts in researching for essays, where you must evaluate conflicting or complementary evidence to support arguments. Via historiography, you come to appreciate that History is only a person’s interpretation of the past, and hopefully acquire a critical and questioning mind which is able to detect subjectivity in the written word and has a healthy scepticism for inequitable arguments. Above all, we hope that we will foster in you a lively and enquiring disposition backed up with serviceable intellectual skills.

History in the Sixth Form is a mind-broadening experience as well as a rigorous intellectual discipline and we try to provide you with stimulating co-curricular activities. There are a number of trips to London to hear professional historians speak and in the summer term of the Lower Sixth there is a trip to Berlin.