“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”

Marcus Garvey

The Cape Cornwall School curriculum ensures that all our students have the opportunity for academic and personal development across a broad range of subjects and experiences. It combines equality of opportunity to our core learning with opportunities for students to make individual choices regarding their learning experiences.  Acquisition of knowledge and transferable skills are the cornerstones of our student’s progress, and we place a high value on building their understanding of community, place and social justice. Lessons and other learning experiences are sequenced to build on students’ prior knowledge and ensure that students deepen their knowledge of each subject and the interconnection between subjects and their global context.

Our curriculum is the foundation to achieving our Core Principles:

• Students leave Cape with high-value achievements and the life skills and resilience that provide a platform for future success and happiness.

• We are inspired to work together to research, design and implement highly effective and sustainable solutions to develop and maintain our thriving school community.

• Continuous improvement is achieved through a whole school culture of, and commitment to, creativity, engagement and professionalism.

What is unique to the study of history?

Studying history is vital to give students an appreciation of what has shaped the world they live in. Our knowledge-rich curriculum allows students to investigate local, national and international events and developments from various periods. This breadth enables students to develop critical history skills, such as identifying and evaluating cause, consequence and significance. These skills and knowledge provide students with an ideal building block to build their understanding of Key Stage 4 history, or an equally important set of academic skills that can be transferred to other Key Stage 4 subjects. In addition, we teach topics that have been selected to inspire and enthuse pupils, promoting a love of learning that goes beyond the history classroom.

Through our carefully sequenced programme of learning, we ensure that young people at Cape Cornwall School have the opportunity and the motivation to learn, develop, and become confident in a wide range of history skills and topics in line with the National Curriculum. We have selected content that enhances pupils’ awareness of British Values such as democracy and tolerance whilst allowing pupils a chance to explore the background behind ongoing changes in society. This allows our students to see the political, social, religious and economic implications of historical events and changes and genuinely appreciate the ‘big picture. In addition, we consciously use our history curriculum to challenge students and develop their cultural capital, ensuring pupils have access to artefacts, opportunities, stories and vocabulary that will inspire them and allow them to connect what they are learning and the wider world. 

We believe that no student should come to the end of their history journey at Cape Cornwall without having had the opportunity to study world-changing events like the Holocaust, votes for women, and the Slave Trade. Developing an understanding of these events helps develop young people peoples’ compassion and empathy. This, in turn, gives students a greater understanding of the world they live in. Furthermore, it encourages students to develop an appreciation of the progress made based on lessons from the past and identify where inequalities and lasting consequences remain so they can be ready to challenge them. 

We are committed to offering our students a variety of extra-curricular activities. Examples include visits to Restormel Castle and Pendennis Castle, site investigations at Levant and Geevor Mine, , Holocaust survivor talks, interviews with older members of the community and history theatre trips. We actively develop community and cross-curricular opportunities so that our students appreciate that there is history in everything. This allows students to understand and participate in the man engine centenary at Levant and Remembrance Day commemorations.

The history curriculum teaches our students a range of highly valued and sought after skills that prepare them for various careers, such as research skills, analysis, evaluation, independence in learning and the ability to appreciate the experiences and opinions of cultures other than our own. These skills allow our students to successfully pursue careers in journalism, research, politics, marketing, education and law.

In History, our repeat concepts are:

• Cause and Consequence
• Similarity and Difference
• Change and Continuity
• Significance
• Diversity
• Chronology
• Source Analysis
• Interpretations