Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities
What you need to know
Read on to find out more about Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities and how we support you towards success.
Curriculum
Aims
Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities helps learners to lay the foundations for lifelong learning, including:
• curiosity about the world around them and enthusiasm for learning
• knowledge, understanding and skills that can be applied in and across subjects
• effective and confident communication skills, including in English understanding of their personal and local context, as well as having global awareness.
Learners explore the world, its people and places, locally, nationally and globally, in the past, present and future. They develop knowledge, understanding and skills related to:
• how the world works and changes – key concepts, events, processes and interconnections
• how they make sense of the world – worldviews, narratives, ideas, interpretations and explanations
• their role in the world as informed individuals and community members
• diversity in the human, natural and physical world
• questioning and reflecting to broaden and deepen understanding and inform future thinking
• humanities and social sciences subjects, to support progression to future study and a lifelong interest in these subjects.
To develop our series of curriculum and supporting resources, we talked to primary and lower secondary teachers from all around the world. Combining this insight with that of leading educational thinkers, from Cambridge and beyond, has enabled us to develop this exciting new subject that will expand horizons and help learners thrive.
How we support you in Stages 1 to 9
In this column you will find all the support you need to teach this programme.
School Support Hub
Visit our Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary support sites on the School Support Hub to download the support below:
• Curriculum frameworks – detail the key benefits and aims of each curriculum and provide a comprehensive set of learning objectives, detailing what learners should know and be able to do by the end of each stage
• Teacher guides – help you plan and deliver lessons using effective teaching and learning approaches
• Learning objective exemplifications – examples of how to teach the learning objectives
Progression grid – (Cambridge Primary only) demonstrates how the learning objectives support learners to progress in their knowledge, understanding and skills
• Videos – for teachers to further understand humanities skills
• Subject forum – provides an online space to communicate with other humanities teachers and post questions for our curriculum developers.
Resources
Our digital teacher’s resources include:
• step-by-step guidance and curated front-of-class resources to save time and give you confidence
• links to engaging video content to bring learning to life
• starter, main and plenary teaching ideas for each enquiry to support your teaching of the curriculum
• guidance on how to support learning and communicating in English
• activities to develop learners’ skills specific to humanities subjects, as well as research, analysis, decision making, conclusion drawing and presentation skills
• questions to motivate learners to build their knowledge of humanities subjects and curiosity about the world.
Professional development
Our courses include:
• Orientation webinar: introduction to the resource components, and where to find support
• Introduction to Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities (online mode for 2025): offers an overview of the curriculum and resources, objective-led learning, planning and assessment
• Focus on progress: online course from 2026
• Focus on teaching: online course from 2026.
Visit our professional development calendar to book: cambridgeinternational.org/professional-development-calendar
Curriculum
Structure Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities is organised in three strands: People, Past and Places. The People strand relates to humanities and social science subjects such as psychology, sociology and economics, Past to history and Places to geography. Each strand is divided into sub-strands:
Teaching
approach
• Community
Identity
Money and trade
• Rights and responsibilities
• Skills toolbox: People
• Arts and sciences
• Belief and culture
• Conflict and resolution
• Economy and communications
• Migrations and empires
• Society and daily life
• Skills toolbox: Past
• Economic development
• Environment
• Living places
• Physical features and processes
• Population and health
• Sustainability
• Transport and travel
• Weather and climate
• Skills toolbox: Places
To help your learners develop a deep understanding of Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities, we recommend that you use our enquiry approach. Enquiries are activities that enable learners to work towards or achieve the learning objectives. This approach helps teachers plan engaging, rigorous and challenging activities for their learners. The steps of the enquiry approach are: getting curious, exploring, sharing, considering what is next, and reflections.
For each strand, there is a skills toolbox of learning objectives specific to the strand. These are designed to be integrated within and across the enquiries.
Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities
How we support you in Stages 1 to 9
School Support Hub
• You will find descriptions of the strands and sub-strands in the curriculum frameworks, along with both general and strand-specific glossaries that provide definitions of key terms.
• Our skills videos will support you in teaching strand-specific skills such as: understanding opinions, viewpoints and worldviews (People); using sources to study the past (Past); and carrying out fieldwork (Places).
Resources
• Our digital teacher’s resources are aligned to the curriculum, which means the content follows the same structure of the curriculum strands.
They are also structured into the same three stages: 1 to 3, 4 to 6 and 7 to 9.
Learning objectives (LOs) are mapped to each enquiry, supporting you to use the LO for the strand you want. You will find the LOs listed at the top of each enquiry.
Professional development
Our courses include:
• Introduction to Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities (online mode for 2025) offers an overview of the curriculum, including information about the curriculum strands.
School
Support Hub
You will find support on teaching and learning approaches, including teaching enquiries, in the teacher guides The enquiry approach guide explains our enquiry approach in detail and will support you to get started in planning and delivering the curriculum. We also provide an enquiry template for planning your own enquiries. Example enquiries suggest activities that enable learners to work towards or achieve the learning objectives.
Resources
Our digital teacher’s resources include:
• enquiry-led teaching activities, which develop learners’ skills specific to humanities subjects, as well as research, analysis, decision making, conclusion drawing and presentation skills enquiry questions, which engage learners’ curiosity about their world and motivate them to build their knowledge of humanities subjects.
Professional development
Enquiries are also covered as part of our professional development courses.
Curriculum
Flexibility We have organised the learning objectives by Stages 1 to 3, 4 to 6 and 7 to 9, so you can decide when to teach them.
You do not have to teach all the strands and/or all the learning objectives. You decide what to teach. You can choose between Past, People and Places, or all three. You may want to teach enquiries that focus on learning objectives from one strand and/or that integrate learning objectives from two or all three strands.
You have the option to:
• teach the example enquiries without adaptation
• adapt the example enquiries for your learners and context
• develop your own enquiries.
Assessment There is no summative assessment for Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities. Teachers are encouraged to assess learners formatively in the classroom through discussion, observation and lesson outputs.
How we support you in Stages 1 to 9
School Support Hub
The Cambridge Primary progression grid supports you to plan when to teach primary learning objectives*. Descriptions in the curriculum frameworks will help you decide which strands and sub-strands to teach. The learning objective exemplifications will help you decide which learning objectives to teach and how to teach them. The example enquiries include activities and resources that you can use, as well as links to information and resources to support you to adapt the enquiries for your learners and context. There is also an enquiry template to use for developing your own enquiries.
Resources
Our digital teacher’s resources support the flexibility and adaptability of the curriculum with: downloadable worksheets, which you can adapt for your own local context, with guidance on how to do this starter, main and plenary teaching ideas for each enquiry, giving you flexibility to adapt lessons to your needs guidance on how to teach the learning objectives in an active way and adapt them to different contexts video content links that include suggestions for alternatives, enabling you to make the most appropriate cultural choice and help your learners see themselves in the curriculum.
Professional development
Our professional development courses also support you with the flexibility of our offer. See page 3 for more information.
*This grid is not included for Cambridge Lower Secondary as it demonstrates how learners progress from Cambridge Primary to Cambridge Lower Secondary.
School Support Hub
Our assessment guide helps you to develop assessment in the classroom. You will also find information on monitoring learners’ progress in the teacher guides and enquiry approach guide. There is also an education brief on assessment for learning (cambridgeinternational.org/Images/271179-assessment-for-learning.pdf) on our website which explains what assessment for learning is and what the benefits are.
In the example enquiries, you will find success criteria and activities that provide opportunities to monitor learners’ progress towards achieving the learning objectives.
Resources
Our digital teacher’s resources include:
• assessment guidance to make it easier for you to assess your learners’ progress, with guidance on how to gather formative feedback on the understanding and skills you want your learners to develop support for adapting the level of difficulty of the enquiry and language support, so you can cater for all your learners.
Professional development
Our courses include:
• Introduction to Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities (online mode for 2025): offers an overview of assessment.
Discover more
To find out more about Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Humanities, visit our website: cambridgeinternational.org/primary-humanities cambridgeinternational.org/lower-secondary-humanities
You can also explore our teacher's resources here: cambridge.org/education/humanities
Cambridge Pathway
The Cambridge Pathway offers five stages of education from age 3 to 19, with curriculum, resources and assessment. Registered Cambridge International Schools benefit from high-quality programmes, qualifications, assessments and a wide range of support so that teachers can effectively deliver in the classroom. Find out more at cambridgeinternational.org/pathway