The benefits of studying History

Besides the sheer enjoyment of learning about dramatic events and stories, studying History helps you train your mind and teaches you how to process information sensibly.

It challenges children of all abilities to ask and answer important questions, find evidence, assess its relevance and reach conclusions. Historians, even young ones, need to be questioning detectives who, when faced with any kind of evidence, want to know why it was produced, who generated it and what message they were wanting to put across. Bias and propaganda have always existed and we foster a sense of awareness of this in our pupils.

History helps children to develop the skills in the modern world to look beyond the headlines, to ask questions properly and to have the confidence to express their own opinion.

It helps them to understand the origins of modern political and social problems, as well as help them to appreciate that people in the past were not just 'good' or 'bad', but motivated in complex and inconsistent ways, just like us.