COURSES

History
Overview
“What’s the point, it’s all about dead people.”
“It’s all bunk, you can’t learn anything from the past.”
“Why bother with all that old stuff – it’s all been
and gone.”
“History can’t teach you anything, so why bother
studying it.”
Familiar cries from the doubters who see little point
in studying history. How wrong they are. On a
practical level, the study of history develops crucial
skills, which are totally relevant to a wide range of
careers, including journalism and law. Far from being
dead and irrelevant, history is all around us and
affects our lives in a multitude of ways. An
understanding and awareness of it is vital for
making sense of the present, and perhaps the future,
of our world.
The deluge of history TV programmes and books,
whether factual or fictional, is a testament to
people’s thirst for a deeper knowledge of history.
Many regret not having learnt more about it when
they were young. You have the chance, and in an
age when the teaching of history is so colourful
and vibrant.
The department is proud of the number of its A level
pupils who have gone on to read history at top
universities, including recent entrants to Cambridge.
Approach
There is an emphasis on seminar style teaching and
learning at AS and A2. The tutors at Millfield are very
knowledgeable and good at what they do, but the
more you are prepared to read around the subject
outside the classroom, the more you will get out of
your lessons. There is no coursework element at AS;
you will be assessed through your ability to write
effective essays in the ‘period study’ and evaluate
historical documents in the ‘enquiry.’ For both these
papers the most successful pupils will be those who
are able to write and communicate effectively, while
being in full command of the historical facts.
History goes very well in combination with all other
arts subjects, and is also successfully studied by
science pupils who are looking for a more balanced
combination of subjects. It is a subject highly regarded
by both university admissions tutors and employers,
as the skills it teaches – the ability to gather together
information, analyse it and present conclusions –
are valuable for so many different courses and
professions.
Course outline
At Millfield a number of different options are offered,
and it is possible to express some preference for
what you want to study. In the Lower Sixth (AS) all
pupils must study a British option and a European
option and we feel that pupils develop into better
historians if they have studied more than one period
of history. Currently the following options are on
offer: the Norman Conquest, Gladstone and Disraeli,
The Crusades, the Cold War, twentieth century
Russia and Elizabeth I.
In the Upper Sixth (A2), pupils build on their Lower
Sixth options, studying such topics as twelfth
century England, Tudor rebellions, the causes of
World War Two, the Cold War, civil rights in America
and the war in Vietnam.
Not all these options are always available, and only
certain combinations are possible: for full details of
what is available you should see your history tutor.
At AS level, pupils take an essay paper and a
documents paper, each worth 50% of the AS marks.
The essay develops a skill already tackled in some of
the longer answer questions asked at GCSE, and
requires pupils to write analytical responses to open
ended questions asking ‘How far…’ or ‘To what
extent…’. The documents paper asks questions
which again build on the skills of source handling
and evaluation which were learnt at GCSE.
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Millfield Sixth Form Courses 2014-2015