Welcome to the History Department

History is a fascinating subject. It enables students to enquire into the past, and to gain knowledge to understand the world we live in. Also, it is one of the major academic subjects; it gives students superb transferable skills. Students learn to collect and analyse information, and use this to form their own judgements with confidence, and communicate their ideas through written and verbal presentations. Not surprisingly a high proportion of people in management, including the fields of journalism, law and accountancy have qualified in History.

The department at Cardinal Newman is very successful, gaining excellent exam results at GCSE and A-level, and has recently been judged by Ofsted as an excellent department.

The Nature of History

History is the study of the past actions of identifiable human beings. It is not confined to a study of the famous and influential. It is the study of human intent and must include some evaluation of success and failure. The past actions, which are the subject of history, happen in sequence and of central concern is the relationship between them, their origins and results.

History cannot always be directly experienced and must often be discovered through the use of evidence derived from many sources. This evidence has to be interpreted imaginatively, is never complete and therefore, ultimately, the historian's discipline is concerned less with the communication of accepted fact than with the making of informed judgements.

Why Study History in School?

History is of interest to most people, particularly adolescents. This interest is related to a search for our own identity and self-understanding which depends in part on knowledge and understanding, both of our own individual origins and of the origins and development of the groups - ethnic, national, cultural - to which we belong. It enables us to become more sharply aware of our identity through comparisons with that of other people in a different cultural and time setting (e.g. through the study of Imperial China; Medicine Through Time [SHP course]). Adolescence is a time when the search for self-understanding and an individual identity assumes great importance. History would therefore seem particularly suitable to the 11-16 age group.