History Overview

At Burnside Primary School, we believe that a high-quality history education inspires children’s curiosity, sharpens their critical thinking, and helps them understand the world they live in today. By exploring past societies, local heritage, and major global events, our pupils learn how the past shapes the present, helping them to thrive, achieve, and belong.

Our history curriculum is deeply aligned with our school motto:

• Be Safe: We create an inclusive space where children feel secure asking big, probing questions, analysing historical sources, and exploring complex global events with confidence and open minds.

• Be Smart: Pupils build a strong chronological narrative of local, British, and world history. They learn to evaluate evidence, weigh arguments, and think critically like real historians (thrive and achieve).

• Be Kind: History at Burnside fosters deep empathy. By examining diverse cultures, local heritage, and historical figures from all backgrounds, children learn to respect different perspectives and celebrate human diversity (belong).

 

In line with findings from national research reviews in history, effective learning relies on building strong conceptual frameworks over time. To ensure our pupils hold a secure, coherent narrative of the past, we have established recurring 'golden threads'—Empire, Innovation, and Civilisation—that run from Key Stage 1 through Key Stage 2. By revisiting these substantive concepts across different eras and contexts, children build cumulative knowledge, make meaningful cross-historical connections, and retain what they learn for the long term.

Core Historical Threads

To ensure knowledge builds logically from Early Years to Year 6, three key recurring threads run through our history curriculum:

• Empire: Children explore how power and leadership work. In Key Stage 1, this begins with understanding monarchs and national leadership. In Key Stage 2, pupils examine why civilisations expanded, how empires grew and dissolved, and how Britain influenced—and was influenced by—the wider world.

• Innovation: Pupils track human progress through time. In every unit, children investigate how new inventions, technologies, and ideas transformed daily life from Stone Age tools to the Industrial Revolution, reflecting on how past innovations shape our modern world.

• Civilisation: Children compare how different societies organised themselves across history. By studying local, national, and ancient civilisations (such as the Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Ancient Egyptians), pupils evaluate what makes a society successful and reflect on their own place in today’s world.

National Curriculum Aims

In line with the National Curriculum for History, our provision at Burnside Primary ensures that all pupils:

• Build Chronological Knowledge: Gain a coherent narrative of British history from earliest times to the present day, alongside significant aspects of wider world history.

• Master Substantive Concepts: Understand abstract historical terms such as empire, civilisation, parliament, and monarch.

• Understand Cause and Consequence: Analyse historical continuity, change, similarity, and difference to draw meaningful connections and contrasts.

• Conduct Historical Enquiry: Rigorously evaluate primary and secondary evidence, questioning how and why different interpretations of the past are constructed.

• Gain Historical Perspective: Connect local history (our region and community) with national and global events across short- and long-term timescales.