Politics At SRWA

The study of A-level politics aims to create critical thinkers that are adapted to understanding issues from multiple perspectives.  Knowledge and understanding of the fundamental building blocks of the course and a high-quality understanding allows students to develop their analytical and evaluative skills. 

Students are taught to appreciate that the world exists through a range of perspectives and that no perspective is necessarily superior to others.  Students are also taught that change is a normal and healthy thing but protections, checks and balances are required to ensure change occurs in an orderly way and meet the needs of society. Students are also taught to appreciate the fundamental difference between how things are supposed to work in theory and how they play out in reality.
 

The A-level politics curriculum is a spiral curriculum that continues to build on knowledge and understanding and as the course progresses gives students opportunities to apply their knowledge and understanding to alternative contexts, thus developing it further.

Students begin studying the fundamental concepts of democracy and participation and understand the fundamental building blocks of the system - Participation, accountability, rights and freedoms, representation.   These key features are returned to throughout the curriculum at various points and students slowly but surely develop abroad to understanding of these issues through contextual examples.  

One specific example of this is the role of rights protections in a democracy.  After learning what is meant by human rights, the different types and how they are protected under law, students move onto a different area of study before returning later on to the subject through the context of the UK Constitution.  Here, they build upon their understanding of rights and rights protections and explore more examples.  After moving to a different area of study again, they return at the end of year 12 to the subject of rights protection in the topic on the Supreme Court.  By the time they revisit the content for the third time their contextual understanding has significantly improved. 
 

The study of politics connects fundamentally to the real world.  Every individual has the opportunity to engage in the political process and one of the fundamental tenets of democracy is that of informed participation.  
Students that study politics are able to progress to tertiary education in a range of disciplines. History, English, law, geography, sociology, and politics itself.  The ability to articulate one’s views on issues from a range of perspectives is an incredibly important skill to develop.