A top private school will introduce a new course called the Story of Our Land after the headmaster complained young people were leaving without a basic grasp of history.

Brighton College will launch the mixed British history, geography and religious studies course for 11 to 13-year-olds from September 2009.

The innovation will be the latest of a series at the school, where manners and Mandarin Chinese have both been added to the timetable in the past few years.

Headmaster Richard Cairns made the announcement as he spoke at the college's annual education conference today.

He told the audience of more than 250 headteachers of his soldier brother's experiences in Afghanistan as he called on them to back the academy schools programme.

Mr Cairns said every school had a duty to make sure pupils had a strong enough education to understand conflicts around the world.

He spoke of his own experiences as a young teacher in the Palestinian territories and the difficulty of having to explain to children that most young people in the UK did not only not know where the Gaza Strip was but would also not care.