It is expected that students will have achieved a minimum Grade of level 6 at GCSE History in order to take an A-Level course in the subject. It is important that you have an enquiring mind, an interest in the past and its relevance to current affairs as well as an ability to communicate your ideas effectively.

You will study:

• The significance of events, individuals, issues and societies in history.
• How and why societies have changed over time.
• The theories of historians and the language they use to discuss their ideas.
• The nature of historical evidence and the methods used by historians to analyse and evaluate it.
• How the past has been interpreted and represented.

Currently the units studied are detailed below:

Unit 1 – Britain, 1625 – 1701: Conflict, revolution and settlement

• The quest for political stability, 1625 – 88
• Religion, conflict and dissent, 1625 – 88
• Social and intellectual challenge, 1625 – 88
• Economy, trade and empire, 1625 – 88
• How revolutionary, in the years to 1701, was the Glorious Revolution of 1688 – 89

Unit 2 – France in revolution 1774 – 1799

• The origins and onset of revolution, 1774 – 89
• Revolution and the failure of the constitutional monarchy, 1789 – 93
• The National Convention, the Jacobins and the terror, 1793 – 4
• From the Directory to Brumaire 1795 – 99

Unit 3 – Civil rights and race relations in the USA, 1850 – 2009

• The changing geography of civil rights issues
• Changing portrayal of civil rights issues in fiction and film
• Free at last – 1865 – 77
• The triumph of Jim Crow, 1883 – c1900
• The New Deal and race relations, 1933 – 41
• I have a dream, 1954 – 68
• Obama’s campaign for the Presidency, 2004 – 2009

Unit 4 – Coursework

Personal assignment based on the Holocaust.