We begin Year 9 with an in-depth study into one of the most formative events of the 20th Century: the Second World War. We take a particular focus on the Blitz and its impact on London. This means we continue a largely chronological approach, picking up where Year 8 leaves off. During our Blitz study we look at the desperate position Britain found herself in at the start of 1940 and debate the question of how close Churchill’s government came to surrendering. We look at a range of exciting contemporary source material including posters, diary entries and even Farnborough Hill’s own archives, to find out what it was like to be a wartime Farnborough Hill girl.
This puts us in an excellent position to introduce the GCSE course in the second term of Year 9. We begin with Paper 1 of the Edexcel GCSE which is a study of Whitechapel, using those same skills developed in the first term. Our initial focus is on the appalling living conditions for many of the poorest in society in inner city London and the tensions that alcoholism, immigration, anti-Semitism and crime produced. This leads on to a study of crime, policing and, the section of the course that pupils most look forward to, the Jack the Ripper murders. We find out why the killer was never discovered.