Out Intent

At Musbury Primary School, our intent is firmly aligned to the aims of the national curriculum for history.  

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 History – key stages 1 and 2
• 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.

Our Implementation 

History is taught every term and is planned as a rolling programme. For Class 1 we have a 2-year plan and for Class 2 we have a 4-year plan. Our curriculum overviews identify when each area of the history national curriculum is taught. Leaders have made decisions about what unit of knowledge is taught when and our progression document highlights the small steps in skills for each year group. Each unit places an emphasis on chronology, to ensure children's understanding about when the historic study took place, no matter what order a child is taught them.

Where possible, we enrich the children's learning with trips, visits or we invite visitors in to school, so that the children can try to gain a sense of what it was like during the era of their study. We have recently visited Powderham Castle, Exeter Museum and Fleet Air Arm Museum to give the children an inside view of life at different points in history.

The Impact

Children’s historical understanding of the knowledge and skills covered in a unit of work is gauged through children’s ongoing work, the quality of their answers to 1:1 and whole class questions and through assessment tasks.