Key Stage 3 · ages 11 to 14
Key Stage 3 history: what your child learns
Key Stage 3 history covers Britain from 1066 to the present day, set within Europe and the wider world. Schools choose many examples, such as the Black Death, the civil wars and the First World War, but the Holocaust is compulsory, as are a local study and a study of a significant society in world history. Teenagers practise building arguments from evidence and seeing why historians interpret the past differently.
Guides for parents
Key Stage 3 history
Britain and the world, 1901 to today
What Key Stage 3 pupils learn about the twentieth century: suffrage, two world wars, the Depression, the welfare state, the end of empire and modern Britain.
Key Stage 3 history
Tudors and Stuarts: Britain 1509 to 1745
What Key Stage 3 pupils learn about Britain from Henry VIII to the Jacobites: the Reformation, civil wars, Parliament’s power, and how to help your child with history.
Key Stage 3 history
Britain 1745 to 1901: industry and empire
What Key Stage 3 pupils learn about Britain from 1745 to 1901: industrialisation, the slave trade and its abolition, the vote, empire and Darwin, with tips for parents.
Key Stage 3 history
A local history study
What a Key Stage 3 local history study involves, how pupils investigate a place or site near them using sources, and easy ways to help your child at home.
Key Stage 3 history
Medieval Britain 1066 to 1509
What Key Stage 3 pupils learn about Church, state and society in medieval Britain, from the Norman Conquest to Henry VII, and how to help your child at home.
Key Stage 3 history
A significant society in world history
How Key Stage 3 pupils study a society beyond Britain, such as Mughal India, Qing China, Russia or the USA, and how to help your child link it to wider history.
Key Stage 3 history
The Holocaust
How the Holocaust is taught in Key Stage 3 history, what pupils learn about the persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews, and how to talk with your teenager about it.
Key Stage 3 history
A long-term theme in British history
How Key Stage 3 history pupils follow one big theme, such as migration, power or the landscape, from before 1066 to the present day, and how to help at home.
Everything in the Key Stage 3 history curriculum
The National Curriculum topics for Key Stage 3, in the order the National Curriculum lists them.