This is the second installment of my blog series on the 2025 Curriculum and Assessment Review. You can read the rest HERE. In this brief blog, focus on the report's stated ambition to build a 'world class curriculum' which 'reflects our society'.

An Inclusive Curriculum?
One of the most interesting parts of this review is the inclusion of a commentary on the need for diversity within the curriculum. This is quite deep within the text (page 32) and is probably the element which most challenges the curricula status quo. It is really encouraging to see the commitment to ensuring all young people are represented through curriculum and that they should encounter ‘a wide range of perspectives that broaden their horizons’ (p32). It was especially good to hear the student voice coming through strongly here. The authors noted that pupils made ‘compelling arguments…that the curriculum needs to reflect society, support equality of opportunity, and challenge discrimination’ (p33). Again, the fact that this element is coming through so strongly highlights the failure of the paradigm of the previous curriculum reforms to deliver on these aims. 
 
It is hard however to be optimistic about the opportunity for reform when calls for more inclusive curricula go back decades. Nick Dennis for instance has highlighted the important work of educational activists such as Bernard Coard and Nana Bonsu, who were instrumental in the ‘Supplementary Schools’ movement; as well as numerous government reports (e.g. Rampton (1981), Swann (1985), McPherson (1999) etc.) which have focused on the importance of a diverse and inclusive curriculum. It is also notable that there is no recognition of the calls for decolonisation, nor the work which has been done to decolonise curriculum. The authors state that ‘mutual access to core knowledge, and curriculum coherence, efficacy and breadth for all children should remain central as we work to ensure the curriculum is more broadly representative’ (p33). But simply adding more stories into the curriculum is not the same as a truly inclusive curriculum. This treats curriculum as content choices only, ignoring its wider ontological, pedagogical, ethical and affective dimensions, and running counter to almost all theoretical work on curriculum. Inclusive curricula consider not only the curriculum content but the purposes of teaching, the pedagogies employed, and the agency enabled through teaching. Because the review is so wedded to the ‘knowledge-rich’ and ‘mastery’ approaches, it is hard to see how these aspects of inclusivity can be pursued at all.  
 
It is also notable that the phrase ‘a curriculum that reflects our society’, by definition, raises questions about what constitutes ‘our’ society, as well as encompassing the challenges society is facing. The report itself notes that children in Britain, and by extension the wider world, are facing an environmental crisis, ‘A curriculum that reflects our society’ therefore needs to tackle these aspects as well. Dale Banham has spoken many times about the importance of the curriculum acting not just as a mirror, reflecting our society back to us, but as a light to illuminate paths forwards. A curriculum should enable young people to reflect on societal (and global) directions, ethics and values with a view to shining a light on future paths. This kind of work has never been more important.  
 
Yet the solutions remain stubbornly unambitious partly due to their attachment- and unwillingness- to challenge the ‘knowledge-rich’ approaches and pedagogies laid down in  the last ten years. There is little evidence that the ‘powerful knowledge’ turn in schools has in fact allowed young people to ‘engage more effectively with issues affecting them and the world around them’ (p34). Rather, there is good evidence that the ‘powerful knowledge’ approach, as interpreted in the National Curriculum set by the last government, led to increasingly narrow curricula, especially in History, and actively blocked pupils from understanding global forces such as colonialism by making the subject taboo in schools.  ​

A World-Class Curriculum with no Planetary Perspectives 
The report also suggests that ‘it is crucial that young people benefit from an understanding of the climate crisis’s causes, consequences and possible solutions’ (p40) and that ‘subject-specific knowledge remains the best investment in preparing young people for these challenges and opportunities’ (p34). The lack of citations here is quite notable! In almost the same breath we are also told that pupils will need this knowledge so that they have ‘the necessary knowledge and skills to thrive in tomorrow’s industries and tackle the serious challenges facing our planet’ (p40). This is a set of outcomes rooted firmly in the idea that 'sustainability education' can be a means for continued economic growth. Such an analysis seems to sit a decade or more behind the current consensus on the planetary crisis we are facing. In his 2021 book, Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, Bruno Latour makes the case (supported by a significant scientific consensus) that the concept of sustainability and the maintenance of extractive late-stage capitalism have long since become non-options for future directions. His claim is that the planet is already beyond the point of total transformation. Humans have altered the Earth to such an extent, he argues, that we have left its surface altogether, the world has changed in our absence, and that our current challenge is to work out how we land again safely on this new Earth. Such a challenge requires education to, as Martin Gren put it at a recent conference, lift its gaze beyond societal concerns and consider questions which relate to what sort of planet we can and want to live on, through and with. Gren’s call is for traditional disciplines to consider how they collectively might contribute to the reimagining needed survive on a new Earth.  
 
In this context, the continued failure to recognise the importance of challenging existing modes of thinking about the planet means opportunities for meaningful change are lost. Whilst the concepts of 'climate change' and 'sustainability' appear numerous times in the report, the intertwining issues of colonialism and planetary collapse are not highlighted at all. Instead, issues of climate and sustainability are framed in narrow, nationalistic ways, with an emphasis on enabling economic advancement. There is a call to ‘maximise young people’s opportunities’ and prepare them for ‘the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and trends in digital information’ (p10) with its demands for ‘media literacy and critical thinking’ (p10). The solution proposed is to leverage sustainability education as a means to find children future work in economic fields connected with AI, digital information, media, and so on. The inherent contradictions in pursuing both of these aims are also ignored. Many of these industries are actively contributing to the crisis in our planetary system – not least AI. Of course, addressing global issues does not preclude the study of traditional subjects, but it does raise real questions about whether the content and core concepts of the traditional subjects (especially in isolation) are sufficient. To come back again to Latour’s framing, every discipline needs to become a geo-discipline which has a concern with the planetary Earth. 
 
It is also notable that this lack of engagement with the planetary is reflected in the review of the Geography curriculum itself, which is deemed as 'fit for purpose', and requiring  only ‘light-touch attention' (p82). Any reference to the need for a focus on planetary issues is subsumed under the somewhat inadequate heading of ‘green skills’ and the recommendation to focus on climate and sustainability education. The latter has already been noted as an inadequate response to the planetary crisis by many experts in the field, and I am convinced will have been raised by professional bodies, teachers, parents, pupils and scholars who contributed to the review process. Indeed, Martin Gren's 2021 article 'Climate Emergency - Another Mayday Letter from the Earth' makes an impassioned plea for Geographers to take the planetary dimensions of the current crisis seriously.

Similar is also true in the Science curriculum. Although there are more mentions of the climate in the notes for Science reform, the imperative is linked to ‘supporting the wider economy, with the growth of the green economy’ (p115) and is building from a previous curriculum iteration which made only limited reference to climate Science. There is also a continued focus on the concept of sustainability here too, despite calls for the concept to be left behind. It is notable that sustainability education has been a major focus in many European countries and is now beginning to be abandoned. By contrast, England is only just beginning to engage with an already defunct conceptual framing.
 
The fact that the global perspective is so absent from the reform of Science and Geography reveals already that the chances of meaningful shifts towards more global focuses across the curriculum, as suggested by Latour, will almost certainly not happen. If the planetary lens is not central to curriculum then whether or not teachers engage with it will be entirely dependent on the interests of individuals.  Curriculum specification could lead to significant investment in planetary-scale teaching, but the opportunity is squandered. The absence of the planetary leaves us on the edge of a lost decade in education when it comes to educating children meaningfully for the Anthropocene.

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This is the first instalment in my blog series about the 2025 Curriculum and Assessment Review. You can find the other entries HERE.  In this blog I am looking at how the review has interpreted the breadth, depth and balance of the current curriculum, as well as the suggested changes. 

Broad Directions
The first point I really found myself 'nodding along' to in the review came on page 9, which states that the National Curriculum ‘is just one element in the education of every child’ and ’ was not intended to take up an entire school day.’ In a really welcome move, the authors note that schools are expected to ‘go beyond it to provide innovative practice, locally tailored content, and enrichment activities that help to ensure young people thrive in education and later life.’ In all honesty I think most schools do much of this already and would be more interested in how this might be enabled, but it is still nice to have the principle recognised early on. 
 
Another positive note in the report was the commitment to ensuring that the drafting process for the revised National Curriculum ‘must involve teachers, as well as be  informed by subject specialists’ knowledge of the discipline’ (p53). It would still be good to have more transparency about the selection of panels for such work, but this could potentially come further down the line. 

Primary Curriculum
Also, welcome is the recognition that the Primary curriculum is currently extremely overloaded and has too much breadth at the expense of depth. What feels slightly more confusing however is that the implied solution seems to be to support ‘greater breadth and depth’ by specifying coverage in more detail. This sounds like adding more demand in terms of curricular specification and feels like it runs counter to other suggestions that pupils’ experiences of education need to be more than the curriculum. However, on the theme of specificity the report seems to suggest the need for greater specification without adding to the volume of content or impeding teacher autonomy. I am fascinated to know how this will look. 

Secondary Curriculum
With regard Key Stage 3, structural challenges are noted as a cause of low learning motivation. However, the core challenges are noted as being resource prioritisation compared with Key Stage 4 (probably fair) and limited continuity between Key Stage 2 and 3. Again, this feels like another implied case for greater control over the content of the Primary curriculum and modifying its role to serve the development of subject knowledge for secondary. Given this has already been a direction for the last 10 years, I cannot imagine it would be helpful. It certainly does seem to mean even greater specification of curriculum content at Key Stage 3: ‘Our recommendations are designed to tackle these challenges by improving curriculum content, specificity and continuity, introducing a diagnostic assessment tool to support progress and strengthening the educational experience during this critical stage.’(p45) I can’t help but feel like we have been here before back in 1989…  

It is interesting I think that there is a broad acceptance of the current Key Stage structure. Given the extreme dip we see in student engagement in transitioning from KS2 to 3, it might suggest there is something for fundamentally amiss here. I do wonder if any studies were done / data explored in relation to middle schools, which bridge the KS2-3 divide by taking pupils from Years 5-8. ​

I was however pleased to see a challenge to the dominant EBacc structure in Secondary schools. This will of course present challenges for subjects like History but is a lifeline for those subjects whose time and resources have been stripped by leadership teams seeking to maximise P8 scores at the expense of pupil choice. It is important I think that the authors emphasise that, if we are to widen choices, ‘we must particularly avoid facilitating trends for young people from some backgrounds to take routes that are narrower or less demanding’ (p30). By the same token however, I hope they will also support the idea that students who are more academically able should also take a broad range of subjects, so that breadth does not become something pushed only for those deemed to be ‘disadvantaged’ by the system. Curricular narrowing is not just an issue for those seeking vocational pathways post 16. However, there is a fundamental contradiction in the announcement of the removal of EBacc. The Progress 8 measure will be retained and whilst the EBacc bucket in Progress 8 will be renamed as ‘Academic Breadth’, its function and role in calculations will remain unchanged, still incentivising schools to enter pupils for at least one of the three foundation subjects: history, geography or MFL. In effect it means that the EBacc will no longer exist but it will still exercise nearly the same impact over curriculum choices as Progress 8 hold much greater sway for schools in proving performance than the EBacc entry and attainment measure. 
 
Moving beyond the puzzling and into the realm of the actively discouraging is the continued adherence to the ‘knowledge-rich’ approach established under the last government. Indeed, retaining the ‘knowledge-rich’ approach is a core principle of the review, continuing to cite Young and Muller’s work on the subject, though without acknowledging the many critiques, including those by Young himself who argues that a ‘powerful knowledge’ curriculum must also be a ‘resource rich’ curriculum! Many aspects and implications of the knowledge-rich / mastery approach are left unexamined and unexplored. Indeed, the now familiar drivers of mastery, coherence and sequencing remain as core curriculum principles, once again sidelining wider ethical considerations. The report however seems to be even less sure what mastery might mean, pointing out that it is both important but should not be seen as repetition. Again, the pedagogical and affective implications of a mastery approach are not unpicked. However, the report itself notes that these approaches ‘have not yet benefited all’ (p7). It is an odd faith to put in an approach to education which has not only failed a significant minority in terms of transition into secondary and academic outcomes (I’d argue the majority in terms of affective outcomes), but has also widened gaps for the most disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND. Indeed, the report itself highlights this exact gap yet still commits itself to the same educational paradigm.  

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The reality of how this work impacts on "the history teacher community" is however quite different. Despite the wide range of materials available, many are not accessible in schools. This is often because such studies sit behind paywalls and are prohibitively expensive for schools, or else are delivered at conferences which do not reach out to school audiences and often happen during term time. At the same time, academics have little incentive to share their work in teacher publications as universities prioritise the publications which contribute to the “Research Excellence Framework”. There is little kudos in a Teaching History article in the world of most big universities. Although teachers could theoretically access such studies, the chances that they will are low. In addition to this, many of the studies conducted by academics are not immediately accessible to a teaching audience, their findings and implications not easily converted to practice. There is often a divide between the research and the classroom environment.

There are of course exceptions to this rule. The Research Ed movement has tried to include research in a format for schools, but this often involves exceptionally reductive transmission research with a focus on “working out what works” in a fairly generic, pedagogical sense. By contrast, UCL’s Centre for Holocaust education offers a far better example of where academics and those with school experience have come together to create research and to convert it for classroom application, without losing the nuance. Students and teachers work with UCL academics and their research to understand the growth of ideas about “race” and “racism” and are asked to grapple with the roots of antisemitism. This model is very much to be applauded and it is why I think a similar centre for the study of empire and migration would be brilliant. However, for the most part, academic educational discourse has a long way to go to reach out more meaningfully to schools.

Teaching History as “community” discourse
Given so few teachers engage directly with “academic” discourse, I want to turn to more common sources used by “the history teacher community”. For the most part this means teaching conferences and the HA’s Teaching History journal. The notion of “community” thinking being embodied in this journal I think is fairly central to many discussions about history teaching in England, and especially in the new Ofsted frameworks. Indeed, my most recent bulletin from the Historical Association reinforced this notion: 

​The idea that “the community” via Teaching History has been tackling issues of diversity in curriculum and enabling students to understand constructs such as racism comes through quite strongly in this bulletin and echoes many of the discussions I have been party to online or at conferences. Although there is recognition that more needs to be done to meet the current challenges, the use of phrases such as “over the years”, “continue to” and “add to” present an overall narrative which suggests the challenge of tackling racism (or other injustices) has always been central to "the community" as embodied by Teaching History. A sense is given that “community” discourse is lighting a path towards better, more inclusive curriculum constructions, if only teachers are “seeking to learn” and engage with it. Whilst I am also hopeful that addressing the current challenges might be addressed through communities of practice, the bulletin is a very clear example of the kind of positive “community” self-narrative we have encountered before. Its claims bear the need for honest reflection and testing.

Being honest about “community” discourse
As I noted in my previous blogs, there have been a number of articles published in Teaching History which have a focus on curricular diversity. Recent examples include Hibbert and Patel’s (2019) work on using Yasmin Khan as a model for teaching a more global Second World War; Trapani’s evidential enquiry about the Silk Road (2019); and Bailey-Watson & Kennett’s (2019) project to add curricular diversity via independent learning. All of these are fantastic pieces of teacher research in their own right.

Even so, a focus on curricular diversity, whilst incredibly welcome it does not fully meet the challenge being put to history teachers: to fundamentally re-think how we get students to engage with concepts of race, colonialism, migration, empire, and a host of other concepts. As of the contributors to the Justice to History podcast put it, thinking curriculum reform is just about adding diverse voices is “trying to Polyfilla the wall”, rather than “knocking the wall down and creating genuine change”. Indeed, the one article from 2019 which goes beyond “diversity” and engages more fundamentally with how we frame curriculum is Mohamud and Whitburn’s (2019) piece on the anatomy of an enquiry.

I don’t for one-minute want to suggest that articles published in Teaching History have not been important in pushing on “community” thinking in many areas of teaching. However, my own record reveals significant gaps in what I have been thinking about and discussing as part of “the community”. Of the four articles I have written for Teaching History since 2014:

• One has been about progression in substantive and disciplinary knowledge
• One has been about using historical scholarship to establish a framework for a period study
• One has been about wrestling with causal thinking
• One has been about what knowledge-rich teaching might look like

I have never written explicitly about issues of diversity. Nor have I engaged in any meaningful way with conceptualising race, or colonialism, despite one of these articles being about the teaching of the C19th American West, a period which is saturated in such concepts. Yet I have also claimed that “the community” has been discussing these issues since the beginning.

Of course, this is just my own writing. What about contributions to Teaching History more widely? 

What does a survey of the content of “community” discourse reveal?
By looking at the content of articles published in Teaching History, it should be possible to get a sense of what has been held to be important in “community” discourse and potentially, by extension, “the history teacher community” at large.
​
A good starting point is Michael Fordham’s summary of the fifteen most influential articles published in Teaching History from 2004-2013.

What is notable here is that these articles are primarily about the pedagogies involved in teaching second order concepts. Or in other words they are about the “pedagogical how” more than the “curricular what”. The one potential exception is Riley’s “history garden” article which draws on Schools History Project principles and focuses on the process of building a diverse curriculum, as well as the nature of effective enquiry questions. None of the top 15 articles are about the pedagogy or purpose of teaching racism, or gender, or class, or any of a number of other concepts which have shaped, and continue to shape, children’s lives.
​
Of course, Fordham’s analysis only takes us to 2013 and the advent of the new National Curriculum. I have therefore endeavoured to engage in a similar, though I fear less thorough, study of published content in Teaching History, covering the period from September 2014 to December 2019.* During this period there were 114 articles Published in Teaching History. 

• There were around 50 different core focuses for articles, ranging from assessment, to planning, to change and continuity. Often an article might have a pedagogical and curricular focus, for example, teaching the causes of the rise of the Nazis. In these cases, the primary aim was often to explore the second-order concept, so this was taken as the core focus. The content focuses, unless they were the explicit aim of the piece e.g. “the environment” in Hawkey’s “greening the curriculum”, were noted separately.
• Only 18 core focuses appeared more than once, but some of these received a lot of attention. I have included this list below. There has clearly been much rich discussion in “the community” about the nature and role of knowledge, the role of historical scholarship, and wrestling with written argument. By contrast there were far fewer articles on issues of diversity, and almost nothing written directly about teaching about race or racism as a curricular concept (even cognitive sciences got a greater showing).

• Of the 114 published articles, just five explicitly dealt with issues or diversity, race, migration or empire. This represents 4% of published output. The articles are listed here for reference and in case I have missed one!
  • Mohamud, A., & Whitburn, R. (2019). Anatomy of Enquiry: Deconstructing an Approach to History Curriculum Planning. Teaching History, 177, 28-39.
  • Driver, S. (2019). Absence and Myopia in A-Level Coursework: The Intellectual Revolution against Historical Neglect Begins in the Classroom. Teaching History, 174, 62-69.
  • Nascimento, S. N. (2018). Identity in History: Why It Matters and Must Be Addressed!. Teaching History, 173, 8-19.
  • Dennis, N. (2016). Beyond tokenism: teaching a diverse history in the post-14 curriculum. Teaching History, 165.
  • Waters, D. (2014). A host of histories: helping Year 9s explore multiple narratives through the history of a house. Teaching History, 156.
• Of the five articles, most focused on diversity and inclusion in the curriculum; the importance of integrating diverse histories; or sought to spark wider conversations. This is not a criticism but a reflection of the fact that discourse of this sort does seem to be largely absent. Only Mohamud and Whitburn and Driver’s articles directly addressed  how we teach complex curricular concepts such as race, or colonialism (In a similar way, there are few articles which deal explicitly with how we teach any complex ideas or concepts e.g. gender, environmental exploitation, or class). I feel Nascimento’s exclamation mark in her article is extremely apt – “the community” really do need to start talking more about identity!

What was very clear by the end of this content survey was that considerations of diversity were limited and pieces relating to teaching complex substantive concepts were almost entirely absent. This did not really support the positive “community” self-narrative I had bought into.

What does a survey of the influence in “community” discourse reveal?
Of course, raw numbers of articles are not the only way to look at what has been important in “the community”. Some articles published in Teaching History receive little further attention beyond publication, but others can have an enormous influence – as can be seen in Fordham’s initial summary. I was therefore interested to look at the influence of articles dealing with diversity, or concepts connected with race, migration, or identity, to gauge their importance in the wider “community” discourse.

I first looked at the ways in which articles published between 2014 and 2019 continued the discourse of four key pieces on diversity, race, migration and identity published between 2010 and 2016, namely:

• Whitburn & Yemoh’s, ‘My people struggled too’ (2012)
• Mohamud & Whitburn’s, ‘Unpacking the suitcase’ (2014)
• Mohamud & Whitburn’s Doing Justice to History (2016)
• Dennis’, ‘Beyond tokenism’ (2016).

​To establish the levels of influence these four articles had on discourse in Teaching History between 2014 and 2019, I chose to count how many times these four pieces were cited in all articles published between during this period. I counted individual citations as I think this gives a clearer sense of the level of influence i.e. if a piece was cited twice in one article, it was counted as two citations.

My results were quite depressing. From my study, I found that none of the four articles listed above was cited more than 3 times in total between 2014 and 2019, and most of these citations happened within a single article. By contrast, Riley’s history garden article (2000), and Hammond’s more recent piece on the knowledge that flavours a claim (2014) were cited 37 times each in the same period.

​I also wanted to look at the influence of articles in discourse beyond Teaching History. Using Google Scholar as a rough guide to community discourse, I was able to show a similar pattern in attention paid to the four key articles in this wider field (see the final column above). I also looked at the five key articles published between 2014 and 2020, and dealing with issues of diversity and race, and found that they were barely referenced at all. The figures for this are given below. Depressing indeed.

The issues outlined above are not limited to engagement with the teaching about racism either. There are a whole host of concepts which shape the world children are growing up in which do not seem to receive serious or concerted attention. This was a point Hawkey et al. made when she suggested the need to focus more explicitly on how we help teach the history of the environment (Hawkey, James and Tidmarsh, 2016). How powerful would it be if our curricular conferences and journals were focused on enabling teachers to help pupils grapple with the concepts of race, class, or gender, rather than leaving these things as incidentals on the periphery.

Taking stock
Importantly here, I am not trying to single Teaching History and the Historical Association out for sole criticism. The HA are clearly aware that more needs to be done, and all of us have a part to play in that. It is notable for instance that the Schools History Project have not published much on how we help students to grapple with concepts in the curriculum, despite one of SHP’s principles being to help students understand the world they live in through a study of the past. As a Fellow that is certainly my responsibility.

Any voice in history teaching needs to take stock of where they have done well and where they have fallen short. The current self-narrative is wrong and it has led, for me at least, to a degree of complacency. An investigation of the evidence reveals that my claim that “the community” has been wrestling with issues of race, migration, empire etc. in its discourse is wrong. I think it is worth re-iterating that when, I, or other members of “the community” jump to say that “we are already addressing the challenges of racism and diversity”; we silence those voices who say, “no you’re not” and shut down opportunities to grow.

This has already been a very long blog, so I will lay down three  challenges.

1. We need to continue to engage with work around diversity in curriculum. We have come a long way in this regard since Teaching History was first published in 1969, but there is much further to go. We have good models for this. But we also need to recognise that this is more than just curricular diversity. 
2. As teachers, I think we need to think carefully about the concepts which have shaped us historically and continue to shape young people’s lives and experiences. So often just a handful of concepts are explored in depth in schools, “the nation” often being foremost in these. This is not sufficient. As teachers we need to rise to the current challenge and consider how we help students develop a grounded understanding of: race, migration, empire and colonialism over time. However, we also need to consider other important concepts: faith and religion, family and kinship, class, ideas, political ideologies, the economy, material culture, gender, sexuality and of course, nation, and how we develop students' understanding of these too.
3. We do have a good starting point and models to begin a meaningful study of how we engage with the concepts listed above. The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education is a gold standard, but we don’t have to wait for similar centres to take action (though this is also a call for academics to bring the discussions they are already having into conversation with the needs of teachers in schools). There is definitely a will for “community” discourse to be more inclusive, the challenge then is for history teachers to start exploring some of the concepts listed above, to engage with what has been written, both in academic circles and in Teaching History, and move the discourse on. As Nick Dennis pointed out in a recent blog, we need deeds not words; but in this instance, the deeds might well need to be words.

 



​* I have chosen to focus on published articles rather than editorial pieces, as these are more commonly viewed as the backbone of the discourse, and to match Fordham’s approach

References

• Archer, L. and Francis, B. (2007) Understanding minority ethnic achievement: race, gender, class and ‘success’. London ; New York: Routledge.
• Bailey-Watson, W. and Kennett, R. (2019) ‘“meanwhile, elsewhere…”: harnessing the power of community to expand students’ historical horizons’, Teaching History, (176), pp. 36–43.
• Dennis, N. (2016) ‘Beyond tokenism: teaching a diverse history in the post-14 curriculum’, Teaching History, (165), pp. 37–41.
• Hammond, K. (2014) ‘The knowledge that “flavours” a claim: towards building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales’, Teaching History, (157), pp. 18–24.
• Hawkey, K., James, J. and Tidmarsh, C. (2016) ‘Greening the curriculum? History joins “the usual suspects” in teaching climate change’, Teaching History, (162), pp. 32–41.
• Hibbert, D. and Patel, Z. (2019) ‘Modelling the discipline: how can Yasmin Khan’s use of evidence enable us to teach a more global World War II?’, Teaching History, (177), pp. 8–15.
• Mohamud, A. and Whitburn, R. (2014) ‘Unpacking the Suitcase and Finding History: Doing Justice to the Teaching of Diverse Histories in the Classroom’, Teaching History, (154), pp. 40–46.
• Mohamud, A. and Whitburn, R. (2016) Doing justice to history: transforming black history in secondary schools.
• Mohamud, A. and Whitburn, R. (2019) ‘Anatomy of enquiry: deconstructing an approach to history curriculum planning’, Teaching History, (177), pp. 28–41.
• Priggs, C. (2020) ‘No more “doing” diversity: how one department used Year 8 input to reform curricular thinking about content choice’, Teaching History, (179), pp. 10–19.
• Riley, M. (2000) ‘Into the Key Stage 3 history garden: choosing and planting your enquiry questions’, Teaching History, (99), pp. 8–13.
• Trapani, B. (2019) ‘Who can tell us the most about the Silk Road? Historical scholarship, archaeology and evidence in Year 7’, Teaching History, (177), pp. 58–67.
• Whitburn, R. and Yemoh, S. (2012) ‘“My People Struggled Too”: Hidden Histories and Heroism--A School-Designed, Post-14 Course on Multi-Cultural Britain since 1945’, Teaching History, (147), pp. 16–25.

Critiques call communities and institutions to take stock and assess their record and responsibilities. The “history teacher community” is no exception. Yet one of the most common responses I have seen has been for people to suggest that “the community” has always taught diverse history, or that "the community" has long engaged in explaining racism, or empire, or colonialism. Such statements are usually backed with a range of examples showing where history teachers have engaged with diversity through their curricular constructions. It is the same “oh but we already…” response which I noted in my last blog. It requires an honest appraisal.
​
In some ways the positive assessment outlined  might be considered true. For instance, the Schools History Project, which has been a voice in history since the 1970s, is built around six core principles, one of which states:

​Certainly, SHP has done much to promote this aim through its annual conferences which have included many workshops and keynotes on teaching diverse histories, a particular highlight being Miranda Kaufmann talking about her work with teachers in relation to “Black Tudors” in 2019. Beyond this however, SHP has always tried to promote its core principles through textbooks, resources, and latterly its own GCSE exam specification. Though notably, some elements of these books have required re-writing due to portrayals of different groups, or problematic narrative elements.

Another SHP principle discusses the importance of history helping children to make sense of the world they live in: 

​This is a clear statement of purpose which gets to the heart of the current call to action, and one of which I am proud to support. 

"The community” might equally point to the many workshops at Historical Association conferences on themes such as globalising the Second World War, teaching the history of medieval Mali, or embedding migration through Key Stage 3 as evidence of a commitment to diversity. There has also been a fantastic HA Fellowship programme coordinated by Abdul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn in conjunction with Nick Draper and Kate Donnington helping teachers to teach about transatlantic slavery. This certainly makes me proud to be part of the “history community”.

Testing the limits of our pride
But being proud of anything is always a risk. As my grandmother used to say, “pride comes before a fall.” The trouble is that “the community” risks being so caught up in its pride that it doesn’t realise that it has yet to get off the floor and walk. We have to be forensic in analysing the realities of how “the community” have dealt with the issue of race in the way we deliver curriculum. Are we actually being "anti-racist" in what we do? To claim that “we are already addressing” the #BLM challenge without looking at the evidence fully is to silence valid critique, and to gloss over an opportunity for proper reflection.

I will begin therefore, with some trepidation, with my own curriculum for ITE. As you can see below, I have built in some space for trainees to grapple with issues of curriculum and of representation. At the very start of the year trainees are asked to grapple with the overall narrative being delivered by various books, textbooks and curriculum constructions. We spend an entire day exploring diversity in the curriculum before Christmas, including an exploration of the RHS Race Report, the work of Mohamud and Whitburn, an engagement with Black Tudors etc. In March we have a cross curricular day with the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education exploring how to teach the Holocaust, which also involves a direct engagement with the concepts of race and racism. In addition to these, over the last two years, I have tried to incorporate more diverse topics into our coverage of second order concepts. Looking at evidence for example now involves an exploration of the 11th century Arabic manuscript, “The Book of Curiosities”

​However, there are some big issues here. The TIDE Runnymede report on the teaching of migration, belonging and empire found that “Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses do not provide the space or skills to enable teachers to confidently cover sensitive and controversial issues with young people.” (McIntosh, Todd and Das, 2019, p. 8). My course is still primarily organised around trainees understanding and wrestling with disciplinary concepts. Although I have tried to keep adding more diverse content, and have provided space to conceptualise diversity, I have never really fundamentally questioned whether disciplinary concepts, are the right framing for so much of what I do. Although UCL representatives help trainees to grapple with the issue of racism in relation to the antisemitism and the Holocaust, real engagement with complex concepts like empire or race is almost absent from my curriculum. I can’t imagine that courses which have minimal or no subject specific input are doing much better on this front. This is in stark contrast to ITE courses run by Jason Todd at Oxford, or Abdul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn at UCL, where exploration of student and trainee grappling with these life-shaping concepts is central. It seems that “the community” are far from all being in the same place. 

Moreover, I have never properly engaged in any serious self-reflection of what trainees have taken from the course. When Harris was concerned about his trainees’ engagement with diversity in history for example, he conducted a two-year study exploring their changing views (Harris, 2012). Indeed the "Justice 2 History" approach is to begin with student perceptions of curriculum. My "solutions" have therefore barely begun to address the challenges being raised, yet have allowed me to engage in a positive self-narrative of taking action. I have needed to disrupt this narrative with truth.

Examining school curriculum constructions
Given the issues in the construction of ITE curricula, it is worth now turning to school curricula as another proxy for the state of “the history teaching community”. For a further exploration of these issues, I would highly recommend reading Catherine Priggs’ article in Teaching History 179 which was published a week or so after I originally wrote this blog (Priggs, 2020).

There are of course some wonderful things happening in curriculum right now, not least Priggs’ own work I have noted above. I also mentioned in my previous blog the fantastic examples of history departments embracing more diverse teaching, which have been shown at conferences, or online. However, the “community” picture is far from uniform. I do not want to single out individual departments here as this is about reflection and not “blame”. But what is notable about Priggs’ work is its approach. Priggs and her department explore and review their curriculum with through their own critical lens but also that of their students. There is an express interest in being open and honest,  as well as learning and improving. This is a wonderful model for us all. In  this same vein, I think it is instructive to look at a “typical” Key Stage 3 curriculum and note the distance “the community” still has to travel.

​The following extracts are taken from the two-year Key Stage 3 studied at all schools in one large academy chain. They are illustrative, I think, of a wider picture which I have experienced during my teaching career and whilst working with departments around England. 

Although the initial paragraphs of the rationale offer some hope, the final paragraphs and the reality of the  associated curriculum offer a different image. There is a huge question mark over whether this curriculum is actually addressing diversity, let alone one which would help students understand the ways in which concepts such as migration, belonging, racism or empire have shaped our present age (McIntosh, Todd and Das, 2019; Todd, 2019). Indeed, despite nods to some non-British history, the central organising concept of the curriculum for the most part seems to “the nation”, and its developing political and economic shape. I cannot comment on the teaching of course, but at a curriculum level at least, this does not feel like a curriculum which is expressly "anti-racist". This is a curriculum which does not fit that positive "community" narrative.

As Priggs (2020) notes, the imperative to teach “world” and/or “diverse” histories is not new, but adoption has been faltering, and more recent trends in education have actually seen a shift back towards more national narratives. The curriculum above is therefore not an isolated example. The content taught in schools has narrowed for all kinds of reasons and the National Curriculum requirements to study ‘world history’ have been watered down significantly through academisation. And this is before we consider how “world history”, when present, is too often taught. A study of “the Aztecs” for instance can too readily become a reinforcement of problematic narratives of conquest in which Indigenous peoples only appear in relation to European “exploration”. This is true of other topics of this type. The textbook extract on Columbus (below) gives a good sense of this.

Worse still, "world history" can become a type of orientalism in which Indigenous peoples are not understood on their own terms but are held up for their perceived differences. Note for example the obsession with human sacrifice in almost all curriculum materials on “the Aztecs”. What is clear is that there is still a long way to go. 

Channel frustration into learning
So if we want to make a change, where do we begin? If you are anything like me, you will realise there are huge gaps in your knowledge and understanding. This can be frustrating. As a colleague recently said to me: channel that frustration into filling those knowledge gaps! 

1. If you have not already done so I would read Priggs’ (2020) recent article, Dennis’ “Beyond tokenism” (2016) and listen to the amazing Justice2History podcast on the need for anti-racism to be at the heart of history teaching. If this does not get you fired up for change then I am not sure what will.
2. Having done this, I would then go back to Mohamud and Whitburn’s “Anatomy of an enquiry” (2019) in which they fantastically realign the notion of an enquiry-question-led curriculum with the idea of the enquiry ethic. To quote: 
   “It is universally accepted that secondary school history education is not about the inculcation of one master narrative of the past, but is rather an exploration of constructed pasts…Nonetheless, teachers have to select a particular focus for each of their enquiries and lessons. Which perspectives will be examined? Which sources and interpretations will be considered? Those choices make statements to our students, implicitly or explicitly, about ethical dimensions of the past and the present.”  (Mohamud and Whitburn, 2019, p. 29)
3. In expanding the notion of ethics, Mohamud and Whitburn refer to fourteen principles which were drawn up to guide the planning and teaching of enquiries linked to their fellowship programme. I have linked them here and highly recommend you have a read. What is revolutionary is to see the explicit exploration of concepts of race, resistance, gender, and other key concepts which we have an ethical imperative to teach to our students. How liberating to consider curriculum as a series of ethical choices which empower students in the present, rather having to hear curriculum described as an anachronistic canon of inherited cultural capital to be transmitted.
4. Once you have wrestled with this, I would recommend listening to the Justice 2 History podcast on teaching Migration and Empire at GCSE. Although this seems fairly narrow in its focus, the scope is far bigger. Importantly, the contributors touch on the importance of pedagogies of empowerment which force us as teachers to engage with the ideas and knowledge students bring to school.
   
5. With some initial reading done, it is then possible to turn to curriculum issues. Just like Priggs (2020), we need to ask serious questions about the ethics of what we teach. We need to ask about the ways in which we encounter and explain concepts of race, racism, class, gender, and so on. We need to review our curricula honestly in terms of diversity. We need to think carefully about the messages we send through the ways in which we teach history. We need to be forensic in exploring where we are doing well and where we are failing. Honesty is the only guard against complacency and therefore the only route to improvement. If you want to be really sure of the dangers of complacency, watch this amazing, short video on the ways in which children’s ideas are shaped by the world around them.

​
Demand a curriculum for justice
I think we also need to be vocal about the need for change. This is a potentially momentous opportunity for history teachers (and pupils) to demand widespread change in schools and universities. So often the content of our programmes, our curricula, are dictated by inertia, exam board specifications, or the mysterious market forces publishers use to determine their output. What power there is surely be in having the voices of teachers and pupils involved in a project to establish the ethical criteria for a curriculum for justice. A curriculum which not only gave a fuller picture of the past and its diversity, but also contextualised and helped explain for students the ideas and concepts which shape their world today. To return to Bloch briefly “ignorance of the past…confounds contemporary action” (Bloch, 1992, p. 35) and right now we need a generation are able to see and perceive the realities of injustice more clearly so that they can work to resolve them. That would be a curriculum which, as an SHP Fellow, would truly live out those principles I hold to be important in history teaching. 



References

• Bloch, M. (1992) The Historian’s Craft. New Ed edition. Edited by P. Burke. Translated by P. Putnam. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Dennis, N. (2016) ‘Beyond tokenism: teaching a diverse history in the post-14 curriculum’, Teaching History, (165), pp. 37–41.
• Harris, R. (2012) ‘“Purpose” as a Way of Helping White Trainee History Teachers Engage with Diversity Issues’, Education Sciences, 2(4), pp. 218–241. doi: 10.3390/educsci2040218.
• McIntosh, K., Todd, J. and Das, N. (2019) ‘Teaching Migration, Belonging, and Empire in Secondary Schools’, p. 20.
• Mohamud, A. and Whitburn, R. (2019) ‘Anatomy of enquiry: deconstructing an approach to history curriculum planning’, Teaching History, (177), pp. 28–41.
• Priggs, C. (2020) ‘No more “doing” diversity: how one department used Year 8 input to reform curricular thinking about content choice’, Teaching History, (179), pp. 10–19.
• Schools History Project (no date) ‘Principles’, Schools History Project. Available at: http://www.schoolshistoryproject.co.uk/about-shp/principles/ (Accessed: 29 June 2020).
• Todd, J. (2019) ‘HA Update: Thinking beyond boundaries’, Teaching History, (176), pp. 4–7.

Personal Development
As already noted, personal development is separated out from the welfare heading in this framework. Interestingly, personal development also overlaps with the “quality of education” element, reinforcing the strong focus on curriculum in the draft. Again, here are my key takeaways:
 
Issue 1: There is a balancing of the language of academic challenge from the “quality of education” section with a focus on curricular breadth in non-academic areas. This chimes to some extent with the Activity Passport idea mooted by Damien Hinds before Christmas. However there is a focus on helping students to develop interests and talents beyond academic, technical, or vocational subjects.
 
In principle I cannot see many schools disagreeing with this. However I think it raises significant challenges for some institutions. First, those schools who prioritise examination results above all else, cutting back broader educational provisions and limiting freedoms of choice for students at risk of not hitting targets. Second, those schools for who fail to offer provision beyond the curriculum at all. This is actually much more challenging as financial constraints have meant schools being unable to fund extensive extra-curricular activities and having to rely heavily on the goodwill of staff. I do fear that this focus will lead to increasing pressure for staff to offer extra-curricular provision. This was an issue discussed at length on Paul Dwyer and Will Bailey-Watson’s podcast recently.  There may also be implications for the school day. Many Yorkshire schools now have a 30 minute lunch break, leaving little time for extra-curricular provision. For schools with large numbers of children who are “bussed-in” this is really the only time for a fully accessible provision. 
 
Issue 2: There is quite a heavy focus on “character development”. This seems to include things like resilience, confidence and independence, as well as physical and mental wellbeing. So far this feels like the least coherently thought through point. A huge range of things are covered here and there is a lot of debate now about where the remit of schools ends. That said there is a reduction of “listed” topics e.g. healthy eating, internet safety etc. This might encourage a more coherent and locally applicable approach to what an appropriate pastoral curriculum might look like.
 
I do worry here that there will be a flurry of consultants offering resilience lessons and the such like. For my money, this needs couching much more in terms of how the school supports student development. The obvious answer to a lot of this is a functioning pastoral system, but that doesn’t seem immediately obvious from the text. My plea here: don’t try to tick the boxes without proper consideration for the whole school pastoral approach. 
 
Issue 3: British values finds its way in here again.
 
Until genuine consideration is given for how we teach civics and politics to students under the age of 16, there will be little real progress in this area. As a history teacher I know that I have often had to pick up elements of civics with students because our provision in the UK in this area is so dire. Even when we have had citizenship lessons in the past, the content had been far too vague. Any school which develops a proper civics programme in response to this would get a huge thumbs up in my book!