Year 11 History
Scheme of Work

The second half of a two-year course, and deliberately not a revision year. Five of AQA’s fourteen prescribed parts are taught here for the first time, including the two hardest, and the revision unit is one unit at the end.

The historic environment is the part no printed scheme can write content for. AQA’s own words are that the site “will be as specified and will be changed annually” — so unit 6c teaches the seven aspects the board publishes, which do not change when the site does, and leaves the site as a slot the department fills in September. Two further sentences from the specification are printed for any department about to book a coach: there is no requirement to visit, and no reward is given in the assessment for visiting.

One unit is built differently from every other resource in this range. Unit 6a covers racial policy, persecution and the Final Solution, and it is handled on the same terms as the Key Stage 3 books: taught as a documented process with a chronology beginning in 1933, assessed on accuracy and sequence, and never a role-play, a simulation or a piece of imaginative writing from anybody’s perspective. No image of the dead or dying appears anywhere in this scheme. Those rules are printed in the unit, and the build fails if they are removed or contradicted.

Written to

GCSE subject content: history (DfE, DFE-00346-2014), Ofqual’s assessment objectives, and AQA 8145 version 1.3

Intended for

heads of history, subject leaders and every teacher who has to deliver it

Extent

60 pages · 24 sections

1. 4a

   A Revolution in Medicine: When the Pace Changed, and Why

   Year 11 · Autumn 1 · 6 phases · September – October

   Why did medicine change more in fifty years than in the previous five hundred?

2. 4b

   The Causes of the First World War: Alliances, Rivalry and a Fortnight in July

   Year 11 · Autumn 1–2 · 6 phases · October – November

   Why did the murder of one man in Sarajevo become a war between empires?

3. 5a

   Stalemate and the End of the War

   Year 11 · Autumn 2 – Spring 1 · 6 phases · November – January

   Why did a war expected to last months last four years, and why did it end when it did?

4. 5b

   Germany and the Growth of Democracy — and the Depression

   Year 11 · Spring 1 · 6 phases · January – February

   Why did Germans stop voting for democracy?

5. 6a

   The Experiences of Germans Under the Nazis

   Year 11 · Spring 2 · 6 phases · February – March

   What did the Nazi state do to the people who lived under it?

6. 6b

   Modern Medicine: The Arc Closes

   Year 11 · Spring 2 · 5 phases · March

   Has medicine got better, and for whom?

7. 6c

   The Historic Environment: A Method for Whichever Site It Is

   Year 11 · Summer 1 · 5 phases · April – May

   What can a single place tell you about the period it was built in?

8. 7a

   Both Papers Whole: Timing, Interleaving and the Last Six Weeks

   Year 11 · Summer 1 · 8 phases · May – June

   What do you already know, and what are you going to do about the rest?