History A Level

Course Highlights:
Each year, two students have the opportunity to take part in a subsidised trip to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. This trip is run by the Holocaust Educational Trust and requires the students to carry out a follow-up task passing on their experiences during the trip to the wider school community.
All students will be taken to Southampton University library to access resources to enable them to complete their historical investigation.

Other subjects that work well with this course are:

• English Literature
• English Language
• Sociology
• Ethics & Philosophy
• Psychology

Why study History A Level?
History is often likened to a detective story: an attempt to understand and explain what happened in the past. There is a large part of history that is exactly that; the search for the motivations and reasons for the actions of people in the past. When did Hitler order the deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust? Why did a revolution in Russia in 1917, promising power, food and land to the people, end up producing one of the most ruthless dictators of all? In investigating these and other complex issues, we get a better understanding of our origins and create a structure to view our present.

Course overview

• Students will learn through a range of teaching strategies, including class discussion, group work, independent work and research.
• History is a subject in which you have to feel empathy for people in the past. It’s not just the great events of time, but also the thoughts and feelings of people who have gone before us, from 13-year-old soldiers in the Trenches to leaders of nations. By understanding the experiences of these people we can make more sense of the present – why the world works the way it does, why one country has power but another does not.
• History teaches the skill of enquiry, students will learn to present well-argued and analytical written answers, assimilate a broad range of information and pick out key themes and understand and judge between different interpretations.

Students studying History will:

• Have a chance to investigate a historical topic of your choice. Students in the past have studied the Tudors, the Crusades, Women’s Rights, the Black Death and the Hundred Years War.
• Explore issues in women’s suffrage, the Nazi experiment, the impact of the First World War in Britain and Germany, the growth of the Labour Party.
• Investigate different aspects of economic, social and political history.
• Studying History gives students a much better awareness of the world we live in today. As we study aspects of the past, we draw parallels with the present to bring the subject alive.

Progression routes and future careers

• Transferable skills – History students become skilled critical and analytical thinkers. They can debate issues using a range of viewpoints and reach valid judgements.
• Possible careers- law, journalism, public relations, business management to name a few.