In 2011 Niall Ferguson wrote an article for The Guardian on the state of history teaching in schools following the publication of Ofsted’s History for All report in the same year. He was critical of the report’s uncritical optimism.
There may have been much that was ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ in many of the lessons observed by Ofsted inspectors, but in Ferguson’s view, that meant little in a context where history was not a compulsory subject beyond the age of 14 (it still isn’t); where 30% of comprehensive schools allocated less than one hour a week to History for pupils under the age of 13; and 25% of schools taught History through cross-curricular or interdisciplinary approaches rather than as a discrete subject.
When the report considered a typical scheme of work in primary history, there was concern that pupils would receive a ‘fragmented overview’ of ‘disconnected topics’. We can only wonder why the authors failed to join the dots or dig deeper.
This government’s recent Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) shows a similarly optimistic view of school History, and a similar failure to look and think more deeply. CAR celebrates the rising entries for GCSE History from 31% in 2009/10 to 42% in 2024/25, but fails to acknowledge thatapplications to study History at undergraduate level have fallen by 17% between 2014/15 – 2029/20, with postgraduate entries down by 16% over the same period. Where does the government think future historians and history teachers will come from?
Perhaps they don’t think about such things, which is a loss to us all because our public culture, as well as educational institutions, won’t thrive automatically. Certain preconditions need to be in place, one of which is a political class able to identity major problems and work out solutions based on a combination of knowledge and ethical principles. It doesn’t look like today’s educational mandarins are doing any better than their 2011 counterparts.
The authors of the CAR note the following main problems with the history curriculum:
- An insufficient focus on methods historians use to assess information sources, or on constructing arguments at KS1-3 (ages 5 to 14). The first of these is of particular concern because it feeds into the government’s penchant for media literacy
- Pressure for rote learning owing to the amount of content, at the expense of fulfilling the Assessment Objectives (COs)
- Teachers misunderstanding what content is statutory and what is non-statutory
- The semblance of an overloaded curriculum due to extensive lists of (non-statutory) exemplary material in the KS 2 and 3 programmes of study
- Insufficient recognition of the ‘complexities and diversities of our national histories’ and insufficient guidance to support this goal.
There is much to be said about no.5, but it suffices here to note that the report takes the Runnymede Trust as a bona fide ‘sector organisation’ in their reviews of History and English. Whatever one thinks of the politics of the Runnymede Trust, it is a charity dedicated to work on race relations. It is not known for its experience or expertise in either education or History and English specifically. So, the public could expect a government committee to treat submissions from the Runnymede Trust with some caution if the obligations to sections 406 and 407 of the Education Act, requiring objectivity in teaching political content, are to be fulfilled. Instead its opinions are uncritically accepted with no acknowledgement that any history of a nation will be complex and the outcome of diverse (domestic and international) influences. This is integral to the discipline so maybe what is needed is better educated history teachers rather than more guidance from external bodies such as the Runnymede Trust.
Points 3 and 4 unwittingly express somewhat dim views of teachers who, it is suggested, are either predisposed to miss, or to misunderstand, the words in the National Curriculum programmes of study that say, in bold type, ‘Schools are not required by law to teach the example content in [square brackets] or the content indicated as being ‘non-statutory’’.
If correct, this casts serious doubt on the criteria and standards of entry into the profession. Maybe a government review might have considered the possibility that too many are entering the teaching profession inadequately experienced or educated themselves? This might not be popular, but it may be true, and we need to bear in mind that today, qualification and education have rarely been so distanced from each other. Were this not the case, there would be little need for universities to offer foundation courses to compensate for the fact that applicants may have the qualifications but lack the requisite education.
Points 1 and 2, however, point to the elephant in the curricular room: the curriculum itself. Writing in 2012, Melissa Benn summarised the prejudices of a swathe of educational commentators in implying, in a disparaging tone, that the then Education Secretary, Michael Gove’s preference for a ‘traditionalist, linear curriculum’ amounted to ‘rigid traditionalism’ within the Department for Education.
This type of political criticism of an educational ethos has long characterised the left’s educational efforts, whereas the right’s thinking has been to outsource a moral vision of education to the chimera of an ‘educational science’. The 2010 coalition government would have done better to have spent its £125 million grant from the Education Endowment Foundation on enabling teachers to attend courses to develop their own thinking about their subject and profession. Instead, the EEF endorsed the illusion that problems caused by confused or weak founding principles can be solved by empirical research alone.https://
We might then have had today a profession of educators and commentators able, and more importantly, willing, to point out the obvious: that when it comes to the school History curriculum KS1-3 (that is, while it is compulsory), there is, in fact, rather little that is rigid, traditional or linear about it.
Let’s look at the KS 1-2 History curriculum. Discounting the non-statutory exemplars, here’s what is stipulated for teachers to teach pupils in the 6 years between the ages of 5 to 11:
- Changes within living memory. Where appropriate, these should be used to reveal aspects of change in national life
- Events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally
- The lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements
- Significant historical events, people and places in their own locality.
Key Stage 2
- Changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age
- The Roman Empire and its impact on Britain
- Britain’s settlements by Anglo-Saxons and Scots
- The Viking and Anglo-Saxon struggle for the Kingdom of England to the time of Edward the Confessor
- A local history study
- A study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066
Six years is allocated to this, in Ferguson’s words, ‘smorgasbord’ of a curriculum. In contrast, the social, cultural and political development of church, state and society from 1066-1745; industry and empire from 1745-1901; the challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world from 1901 to the present day; and a study of an aspect or theme in British history that consolidates and extends pupils’ chronological knowledge from before 1066 are expected to be taught in the 3 years of KS 3 only!
Frankly, this is a disastrous abdication of educational responsibility. A generous guess would be that this pig’s ear of a curriculum was probably the result of trying to be all things to all vested parties (except children and parents themselves). Can the present day count as history while its taking place? There are interesting contrasting views among historians about the issues involved, but no evidence that these curriculum constructors were aware of them.
If today’s events count as school history, then where are the boundaries between history, politics, sociology and so forth? Why does pre-1066 history make a somewhat arbitrary re-entry at KS3 after having been covered for 6 years at KS 1 and 2? It is an appalling abdication of responsibility to expect teachers to make the proverbial silk purse from a sow’s ear.
Where I live in Norwich, significant local history could include anything from anti-Jewish pogroms in 1190, the early medieval English Christian mystics, the Lollards’ pit, the production of Norwich shawls, the creation of the fens in Anglia in the 17th century, or Pablo Fanque, Britain’s first black circus-owner who was born in Norwich in 1810.
These nuggets of information lack any overarching principles for selection, such as a national-narrative comprising political, social, cultural and economic history, to be presented chronologically. Without these, the curriculum is too open to the personal predilections of schools, teachers and, increasingly, EDI ‘experts’. Without more structure, a militant atheist teacher might choose the twelfth-century pogroms as an illustration of the evils of religion; a devout Christian teacher might choose the mystics as an illustration of the virtues of Christianity; and a believer in EDI might choose Fanque to illustrate how Norwich has always been multicultural really.
Some examples provide a cautionary tale.
One recent history lesson for 10-year-olds brought to my attention was on the theme of witchcraft. The lesson was the creation of an individual teacher and was presented on a digital platform (the latest deliverer of content, usurping both textbooks and possibly worksheets). It looked like a social media feed, with images of Donald Trump with a witch’s hat on, headlines of news item on the murder of a child by parents under the spell of witchcraft, and concluded with something on how witchcraft had been a colonial export to colonies.
Such arbitrariness is evident where the lesson content is less politically contentious, too. For example, an RE lesson on the Bible required pupils to make their own ‘Bible of Fashion’.
Maybe this was only a single lesson in a scheme of work. Even so, lessons like these are evidence of more than just ignorance on the part of the teacher. They point to a wider lack of oversight by the school, the local authority, the relevant professional bodies, and ultimately, the government. On such a scale, lack of oversight indicates a fundamental loss of meaning of education.
I am a teacher by trade, and have long been a supporter of the autonomy of teachers to create their own lessons. But teachers and schools serve the public; children and parents are not there to serve teachers’ autonomy or schools’ position in comparative league tables. Once, I might have said that the ‘bagginess’ of the history curriculum is to allow teachers the scope to make it their own – which could work in better cultural conditions. But if the profession (and the Department for Education) no longer knows the difference between knowledge and opinion and does not know why Tik-Tok-type presentations are not suitable for school teaching, then somebody with authority has to take responsibility.
We desperately need a better curriculum; one where the underpinning moral and educational vision of a classical liberal education, its attendant principles and substantive content, are made explicit. This would be a helpful contribution to redirecting the profession back to its core purpose, which is to educate the next generation with the best knowledge we have to date. This is best delivered by teachers with a strong commitment to truth as an aspirational standard rather than to the imperatives of either social justice or technical Assessment Objectives.
Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert is a teacher, educationist and the Director of Don’t Divide Us. https://dontdivideus.com/
