Vision
Humanities Colleges will foster an understanding of human values and attitudes, past and present and how society is organised, develops and changes. They will use their specialist status to raise the standards of achievement and quality of teaching and learning in the Humanities for all their students.
Humanities-based subject departments will contribute to whole school improvement by developing innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Humanities Colleges will develop and share good practice across the curriculum, particularly between the specialist subjects. They will raise the post-16 participation rate in the specialist subject areas, and provide young people with the skills needed to progress into employment, further training and higher education according to their individual abilities, aptitudes and ambitions.
Humanities Colleges will be active partners in a learning society with their local families of schools and their communities, sharing resources and developing and sharing good practice. Learners will develop their active contribution to wider society and will work in partnership with the wider community, including business and industry, to enhance opportunities for lifelong learning in the context of Humanities.
Ethos and key characteristics
All Humanities Colleges will foster an understanding of human society through the subjects they have chosen from within the humanities-based specialism. They will:
- Develop innovative strategies for teaching and learning in humanities-based subjects and spread good practice using modern and traditional technologies and experiences beyond the classroom that ensure young people are skilled in the techniques and concepts germane to the specialist subjects and can apply them to other contexts.
- Encourage students to participate actively in society and celebrate cultural diversity from across the world, especially the cultures of pupils and the local community.
- Forge partnerships with the humanities-based industries to deepen pupils’ understanding of human society culture and ethics.
Humanities Colleges which include English as one of their target setting subjects will:
- Give priority to the development of pupils’ literacy, closely adapted to meet their diagnosed individual needs and make dynamic links between English and other curriculum subjects to reinforce pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding.
- Give a high status to books as well as the creative use of word-based technologies (e.g. digital video, radio, film).
- Extend learning opportunities through the use of local writers, libraries, drama groups and theatres, newspapers, radio stations, advertising and public relations companies.
Humanities Colleges which include geography or history as target setting subjects will:
- Develop organisational, enquiry and communication skills, both through geography or history and in other subjects in the curriculum, which enable pupils to develop informed and contextual judgements, views and hypotheses based on skilful evaluation of evidence.
- Enable young people to apply their experiences to the wider local, national and global contexts and to develop an understanding of how people exist, act and think and have done in the past - including through reading and using texts and other source material both critically and empathetically.
- Extend learning opportunities through the use of field work, the built environment, local museums, archives, archaeological sites, historical buildings/sites etc.
- Explore and establish innovative applications of ICT and media technologies to learning in history.
In addition, schools choosing geography as the lead subject will develop an ethos which fosters a keen interest in global, regional and local issues and in how people and environments are interdependent. Schools choosing history would develop an ethos which helps young people make sense of the world in which they live and to appreciate the implications of long-term changes in the way we live and differences between value systems.
Specialist subjects
Humanities Colleges will set targets in three humanities-based specialist subjects. Applicants must choose a minimum of one key subject from history, geography or English. They will choose two other subjects from the following: religious education, citizenship, classics (taken to mean classical civilization, Latin or Greek), drama and (if not already chosen as the key subject) English, history and geography. At Key Stage 4 and post-16, where English is a target setting subject this means English language and English literature.
Further information
72 schools in England have been designated as specialist humanities colleges. In addition, a further 14 schools have been designated in combined specialisms which include humanities and 12 schools have Humanities as a second specialism.
Click here for detailed application guidance.
Click here for a list of all Humanities Colleges (Excel - 41 KB)
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