Until GCSE years, history is rotated with geography and religious education as a "humanities" block. At GCSE you pick one.

As you can imagine, having maybe two hours a week on history for a third of the year (well, two sixths in my school) means you can't go into depth about the UK's long history.

In primary school it was general details, about various historical eras, sanitised to a pre-teen safe level. Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc.

In secondary school you got stuff like the Tudors, Industrial Revolution, a sanitised view of the Empire, World Wars. At pre-GCSE there wasn't much about America at all.

I can honestly say I've learned more about the Napoleonic Wars (and a bit about India) from Bernard Cornwell/Sharpe, the World Wars from Sabaton, and the American Revolution from Hamilton.

I am over a decade past school age though, and I didn't take GCSE History because one of the teachers was an awful person.