Quarry Mount is a multi-cultural school with children and staff who have roots in many countries around the world. This inspires our school to teach a rich historical curriculum with the intention to improve every student’s understanding of culture, individual heritage and equal rights. 

At Quarry Mount Primary School, we aim for a high quality history curriculum which sparks in pupils a curiosity and fascination surrounding local history, British history and the history of other civilisations in the wider world. The National Curriculum states that ‘a high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world'. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past’, and our teaching ensures this. Our curriculum equips pupils with: 
 

• knowledge about the history of Britain and how it has influenced and been influenced by the wider world.  
• knowledge and understanding about significant aspects of the history of the wider world, such as ancient civilisations and empires.  
• an understanding of significant changes in living memory and beyond living memory. 
• an understand of the lives of significant people of the past who have contributed to changes in our society.  
• an understanding of the methods of historical enquiry and an ability to ask and answer questions.  

Our History curriculum has been designed to cover all of the skills, knowledge and understanding as set out in the National Curriculum. We want children to enjoy and love learning about history by not only learning in the classroom, but by also having memorable experiences. These experiences take place both in school, learning from expert visitors, and by going out into the local area on educational visits.  

          

In EYFS, the Birth to Five document is accessed to ensure children being encouraged to develop an early understanding of history. The strands that are focussed on the utmost when developing history skills are Understanding the World and People and Communities. 
 

In Key Stage 1, pupils build on their early historical skills taught in EYFS by developing an awareness of the past through the use of common words and phrases relating to the passing of time, along with the development of a wider vocabulary. Children in KS1 learn about historical figures and periods of time which develop further during their KS2 and KS3 historical learning. At Quarry Mount, staff pay particular focus to teaching children about key historical figures from a range of racial and religious backgrounds, such as Rosa Parks, Samuel Pepys and Neil Armstrong. They also learn about key historical events, such as the Great Fire of London and the first aeroplane flight. When developing their knowledge in Year 1 and 2, they also begin to grow their comprehension of how these people and events fit into a chronological framework. 

In Key Stage 2, children continue to develop their chronological understanding as they delve further into the history curriculum. Although some units focus mostly on British history, Key Stage 2 pupils begin to expand their exploration of history by focusing on the earliest civilisations, such as Ancient Egyptians and the early Islamic civilisation in Baghdad. Topics such as these give the children of Quarry Mount an opportunity to learn about their own heritage and the heritage of others in the school, lending itself to our school aim of ensuring all children are able to celebrate the rich, unique diversity that we have. 
 

As we are a culturally diverse school, it is vitally important that we embed acceptance and tolerance of all races and religions. One way in which Quarry Mount achieves this is by celebrating Black History Month. During the Autumn term, each year group celebrates the life of an important figure in black history and learns about how their actions and words changed the way race is seen in society today.