Leading History
Effective leadership of history at Key Stage 4 is central to maintaining high-quality teaching, securing strong student outcomes and ensuring that the department continues to improve. History subject leaders need to balance the immediate demands of GCSE courses and examinations with the longer-term development of curriculum, teaching, staff expertise and departmental priorities.
This section provides practical guidance for heads of history and subject leaders responsible for leading GCSE history. Explore advice on prioritising your work, developing staff, monitoring performance, making effective use of data, raising attainment and departmental self-evaluation, alongside guidance on policy, vision and forward planning. The aim is to help history leaders identify what matters most, make informed decisions and build a successful department in which both teachers and students can thrive.
10 most important things a secondary history subject leader should always be doing…yes, always
No contrived acronym here or implied order of priority just making sure you do the right things as well as doing things right! 1. Advocate As well as being an…
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Prioritising in history at Key Stage 4
As always there is a balancing act to be done. On the one hand you have to deal with the immediate and the urgent; on the other you know that…
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Developing your staff at key stage 4
Teaching GCSE presents its own set of challenges, not least learning the code that you will need to crack to bring your students GCSE success. Because the GCSE history exam…
Read MoreMonitoring performance in history at KS4
The best way of monitoring students’ performance is to set frequent exam based activities, broadly under test conditions and then to mark them WITH the students using GCSE criteria. Students…
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Using data in history at Key Stage 4
Twelve years or so ago the only meaningful data we had for GCSE was the percentage of students achieving each grade. The headline everyone was interested in was of course…
Read MoreRaising attainment at Key Stage 4
This section of the site contains four different types of advice. There is general advice, outlining factors that usually explain success at GCSE and a short paper entitled ‘Smoking Out…
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Self-evaluation in history at Key Stage 4
Getting ready for a history subject review: knowing what OFSTED inspectors are looking for and the criteria they are using It is essential that you keep up-to-date with current OFSTED…
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Policy and vision at Key Stage 4
Many of you will feel that having a separate history policy at Key Stage 4 is unnecessary, and yet you will be surprised how many departments have never really articulated…
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Forward planning in history at Key Stage 4
There are probably four separate strands that you need to weave into your forward planning. To start with there will be the need to plan for any externally imposed curriculum…
Read MoreWritten by Neil Thompson
All content on Keystage history is written and quality assured by Neil Thompson, a former history teacher, county history adviser and Ofsted inspector with more than 30 years’ experience in history education.