Well it feels like Spring has well and truly sprung over the last week. It’s a strange juxtaposition to be enjoying the emerging snowdrops and daffodils given the state of the world at the moment, but if nothing else it reminds me that spring at least brings the hope of renewal.
The theme of renewal of course runs strongly through the changes which are on the way in the revised National Curriculum. It has never been more important for the wider history teaching community to set out a clear vision for what an inclusive and empowering history education might look like. This work has been taken forwards through the development of the Curriculum PATHS Principles for History Teaching but will only have impact if we can keep building on those principles by sharing our planning and resources as a community.
This Spring Update is therefore also a plea to keep our Curriculum PATHS Sharing Hub growing. We would love to keep exemplifying the kids of amazing work Primary and Secondary history colleagues are doing in schools and communities across the country. If you have a unit which you think embodies the Curriculum PATHS Principles, please do get in touch or share it directly via the Sharing Hub. This will be even more vital as we hit the period of National Curriculum change in 2027-28.
Curriculum Reforms: Opportunities and Challenges
On the theme of curriculum reforms, Curriculum PATHS (as part of Schools History Project), and other colleagues from across the history teaching community, have been involved in discussions with the DfE over the past few weeks about the curriculum drafting process. We have been especially keen to offer our support to the drafting team to help ensure that the National Curriculum delivers on the promise outlined in the Curriculum and Assessment Review to be more inclusive and representative of the diversity of modern Britain, and to ensure historical thinking and understanding are strengthened, from the beginning of Primary through to Secondary, GCSE and A Level. Five key points have emerged from these meetings which I want to share with you here. I will be sharing a longer analysis of the meetings with members via our mailing list. If you’d like to sign up for that, please do join us HERE.
The following is a summary of the five key points which came out of the DfE meetings, as well as how Curriculum PATHS are seeking to respond and support history teachers in preparing for curriculum change.
- There is commitment to ensuring the revised National Curriculum is not radically different to the current version. We were reassured multiple times that the revised curriculum would not be a fundamental re-write, would be more inclusive, and would strive to keep ‘optionality’ central. However there is a complex challenge in ensuring the curriculum becomes broader and more inclusive whilst also leaving teachers the freedom to navigate the content of the curriculum themselves. It is not clear how this will work, nor whether there will be guidance given to teachers on how they can best select content for a curriculum if optionality is to remain central. The current framing has been very narrow, considering things in terms of sequencing rather than the broader purposes and ethics of history teaching. We believe that the Curriculum PATHS Principles for History Teaching offer a clear and well-grounded model for how this guidance could be provided and will continue our work to exemplify the power of putting CPATHS Principles at the heart of history teaching.
- There appears to be a genuine commitment from the DfE (via the CAR) to making the history curriculum more inclusive, however there is less clarity on what this actually means. Key terms such as ‘innate diversity’ and even ‘British’ need much more careful consideration, as well as the current separation between ‘British’ and ‘wider world’ histories. These issues have been fed back but it is not clear how, or indeed if, this feedback will reach the drafting team. We are confident that Curriculum PATHS can provide a range of examples of how these issues might be tackled in real classrooms – showing the complex entanglements of British history in ways which are accessible and appropriate for pupils across the age range. Great examples include Jack Brown and Pam Canning’s enquiry: ‘Why was there a TURNING POINT in Caribbean identity in the 1920s?‘ and Sarah Longair and Sasha Smith’s enquiry: ‘How can material objects help us to understand Britain’s role in the world?’
- There seems to be a commitment to specifying more clearly what kinds of disciplinary knowledge pupils should acquire through their study of history. However, it is not entirely clear whether this will be simply getting pupils to learn about disciplinary thinking or asking them to engage with it themselves. We are adamant that children need to have the opportunity to develop their historical consciousness by engaging with different modes of historical thinking themselves. This empowers them to make sense of the past (and present) for themselves as is vital in ensuring pupils are exposed to critical modes of thinking. Again, there are some brilliant examples of this in Dan Lyndon’s ‘Tape Letters’ enquiry, which gets pupils engaging with and constructing their own oral histories; as well as Barbara Trapani’s environmental history enquiry ‘What can trees reveal about how humans terraformed the Earth?’, which results in pupils writing a briefing for COP attendees.
- The DfE have processes planned to get feedback on the revised curriculum before first teaching in 2028. What this will involve is once again unclear. More concerning however is the barrier being placed around the drafting team at the beginning of this process. In both meetings, the DfE confirmed the drafting team will not be able to speak to external bodies or members of the wider history teaching community unless the DfE decide this is necessary. At the moment the department believe this is unnecessary. This is a very different position to what is happening in the revision of the Science curriculum, where wider input is already being sought to support the drafting team. The DfE will effectively act as gatekeepers for communications between the drafting team and the wider community. This in turn raises some important questions about how decisions are made by the DfE about what is important to communicate. Given these blocks, Curriculum PATHS would like to encourage all members to continue to discuss and share their ideas about what an inclusive history curriculum for modern Britain should look like. You can do this via your school, wider historical organisations, on social media, or simply by sharing examples of your planning with the PATHS project.
- The DfE recognise that changes to curriculum will necessarily have implications for teachers across Primary and Secondary. New topic areas will require the development of teacher knowledge and complex histories will also require pedagogical development too. There is no specific plan for how this will happen. The DfE stated that they expect Oak and schools to fill this knowledge and training gap. Although Oak Academy will certainly produce resource for the new curriculum it has demonstrated a commitment to a narrow set of pedagogies which don’t fit well with the Curriculum PATHS Principles for an empowering history education. Oak has also committed to a somewhat careless use of AI in its approach, further devaluing the professional expertise of teachers. Curriculum PATHS already has a good range of units which exemplify what diverse and inclusive history might look like in the classroom. Crucially, these units represent the wider expertise of the history teaching community. Beyond this though, we hope to keep focusing on how the Curriculum PATHS Principles not only not only provide teachers with a means to navigate curricular optionality as professionals, but also highlight and guide key areas for professional development – allowing teachers to have ownership of their own learning and to do so in community. In addition to this, we want to continue to publish our PATHfinders series on tackling complex issues and histories and flagging up vital subject knowledge and pedagogical resources, just like this recent one from Emma McKenna on teaching the British Empire.
How can I get involved?
My great hope is that Curriculum PATHS and its members, alongside the wider work of SHP, continue to push forward a vision of inclusive history which not only outlines principles for teaching but also gives the practical support to enable this to have real impact in the classroom. If you have not done so already, please do consider sharing your work via the Sharing Hub and continuing to grow our community resource.
Another great way to get involved is just by signing up and becoming part of the Curriculum PATHS movement. If you are not already a member, you can join for free HERE and ensure your voice is heard as we enter a crucial period of change.
