Leading History

Raising attainment in history at Key Stage 1

Experience of working with highly effective subject leaders over eighteen years has enabled me to distil SEVEN key factors that collectively contribute most to raising attainment. Factor 1: The school focuses its attention on the central concerns of each history-led topic in terms of skills and...
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Self-evaluation for history at Key Stage 1 and 2

For Primary history subject leaders it is very important to get a clear sense of perspective on self-evaluation. I f you are not careful you will spend your very restricted non-contact time measuring and not growing the subject.  Naturally you need to take stock of...
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Policy and vision for history at Key Stage 1

There is much debate about the value of a history policy, not least how long it should be!!   A couple of examples are provided here to give you a feel for contrasting ways of doing it.  An OFSTED inspector would be happy with either.  What...
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Leadership in history

When looking at leadership in history a careful balance has to be created between offering generic advice (which you could get elsewhere) and very subject-specific advice, which in its attempt to be unique to history leaves out key generic issues. On the whole I have...
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Forward planning in history at Key Stage 1 and 2

It goes without saying that a history improvement plan must reflect the whole school approach.  There is no need for it to be different.  Usually the following structure is used in grid format.

1. Area for development

  • A limited number of areas for improvement
  • Clear concise...
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Developing your staff at keystage 1

Nearly all teachers enjoy teaching history and will want to improve the quality of their own teaching so that children can make better progress.  However, the demanding task of improving colleagues' practice can be daunting, especially when you first start leading the subject.  The philosophy...
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Monitoring in history at Key Stage 1

Keystage1
Almost every subject leader I know feels that they ought to be doing more monitoring, as if ordered to 'Go forth and monitor!' Because time is so scarce for this sort of activity we need to plan very carefully what we are going to look...
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