Stonehenge at eight, gone by sixteen: how English schools teach the ancient past
Submitted by Andy_B on Saturday, 03 October 2026 Page Views: 28
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William's men dug in behind these Roman walls in 1066. The GCSE mark scheme mentions the castle, not the fort. Children in England usually meet Skara Brae and Stonehenge at about eight, in Year 3 or 4. For most of them, that’s the last time prehistory comes up in a history lesson.
I spend a lot of time with English students who study history, and by the time they reach GCSE, their courses rarely go back further than the Anglo-Saxons. Most of the reason is the way the curriculum is put together. The government is rewriting it at the moment, so this seemed a good time to set out where the ancient past turns up in school, and where it stops.
Primary school (ages 7 to 11)
The Key Stage 2 national curriculum has a unit called “Changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age”. Its suggested examples are Skara Brae for the late Neolithic, Stonehenge for Bronze Age religion, technology and travel, and Iron Age hillforts. Most schools teach it in Year 3 or 4, before moving on to the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings.
Skara Brae, the curriculum’s own example of the first farmers.Some schools make a lot of it, with a museum trip or a visit to a local long barrow. Either way, this is the only stage at which the national curriculum makes prehistory compulsory.
Secondary school (ages 11 to 14)
At secondary school the compulsory list starts in 1066, with “the development of Church, state and society in Medieval Britain 1066-1509”, and works forward to the present day. Schools also have to do a local history study, and one of the curriculum’s suggested options is “a study of an aspect or site in local history dating from a period before 1066”.So a school near Avebury, Castlerigg or the Rollright Stones could spend half a term on its own monument if the history department wanted to, though nothing requires it.
GCSE (ages 14 to 16)
GCSE History has its own rules, set by the Department for Education. Courses must cover three eras, starting with medieval (500 to 1500) and then early modern and modern, and students must study one historic site. Nothing before AD 500 is required.I lined up the options on the five GCSE History courses taught in England. The papers set since the current exams started in 2018 are archived (school.ninja/gcse/history), if you want to check them. Apart from the site studies, nothing starts earlier than about AD 500, which is where two Eduqas themes on crime and medicine begin. AQA and OCR’s History A go back to around 790, and Edexcel to 800.
Older sites do turn up, usually as the setting for something later. Edexcel’s Norman England paper asked about castles in three of its five summer exams between 2019 and 2025 (school.ninja/gcse/history/edexcel). The 2024 question was “Explain why the Normans built so many castles in England during William I’s reign”. The mark scheme gives credit for saying the first castles became bases for the conquest, “e.g. at Pevensey”. It doesn’t say that William’s men had dug in at Pevensey behind Roman walls that were already nearly 800 years old (English Heritage dates the fort to around AD 290).
OCR offers the only two exceptions I could find. Its History B course has a site study, History Around Us, where each school picks its own site, and OCR says some schools pick prehistoric ones. OCR also has a separate GCSE in Ancient History with a unit on Roman Britain, which covers Boudica and Caratacus. Its June 2024 paper asked candidates to “name the governor of Britain who attacked the Druids at Mona (Anglesey) in AD 60”, for one mark.
Where the ancient past sits in school history in England, from age 7 to 16.
Sixth form
AQA used to offer an A-level in Archaeology. It was withdrawn, and the last exams were sat in 2019. Ancient History and Classical Civilisation are still available, but both are about Greece and Rome.After 16, anyone who still wants prehistory has to find it outside school.
The curriculum review
The Department for Education is reviewing the national curriculum. It said a public consultation on the draft would open this autumn, with the new curriculum taught from September 2028 and revised GCSEs from 2029. I haven’t seen anything suggesting the Stone Age unit is at risk, but the consultation is when people can make the case for it, and for giving prehistory more room at secondary school.In the meantime, a teacher planning a pre-1066 local study or an OCR site study needs a site nearby with decent records and something to see. The Portal’s map is a good place to start looking.
