The launch of the Prince’s Teaching Institute Schools’ Programme happened to coincide with the introduction of Unlocking Learning - a Key Stage 3 curriculum initiative within Haybridge High School, in which a cluster of subjects taught aspects of agreed themes, with an emphasis on developing competences. A key principle behind the History Scheme of Work was that, contrary to popular opinion, a thematic competence-based curriculum could provide intellectual challenge and academic rigour, whilst stimulating interest in the subject of History and methodology of the Historian. The Prince’s Teaching Institute Schools’ Programme reinforced the desirability and viability of this principle and the Schemes of Work for Years 7 and 8 were designed according to the key objectives of the PTI.
One of the ways of providing intellectual challenge has been through the choice of subject material. Year 8 students, for example, studied the causes and consequences of religious conflict from Northern Ireland to the Middle East, from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem to 9/11, concluding with an exercise to find a viable and just method of partitioning Palestine in 1947 and then hypothesise on the consequences of the UN partition.
The structure of the Unlocking Learning curriculum enabled the students to undertake a project about living in the 1940s, which culminated in the Year 8 students catering for their own tea dance using available rations and singing and dancing to the hits of the 40s.
Haybridge High School and Sixth Form College is a mixed, comprehensive school