2028 is set to be the start of a significant few years for education. New GCSEs will begin to arrive in 2029 and 2030 , followed by new A Levels in 2031 and 2032. These new qualifications will be preceded, in September 2028, by the arrival of the first new National Curriculum in 14 years! As we have written about before, a small team from the Historical Association is currently working with the DfE to set the direction for the new National Curriculum for History and we are unlikely to see a first draft until Spring 2027. With limited time and resources, many subject leaders will be thinking already about how to best prepare for what’s to come. This is tricky when the content of the new curriculum is, as yet, unknown.
This blog suggests four practical actions subject leaders could be taking now to ensure they are ready for the arrival of the new National Curriculum in September 2028. And if you are totally new to this process (which is very possible given how long it’s been since the last curriculum reform) we have put together a handy guide and timeline, based on these four strategies, to help you get your department ready for what’s to come. You can find it at the end of this blog.
How can we prepare for the revised National Curriculum for History when we don’t know what’s going to be in it?
1. Be guided by what really matters
I know this will sound glib, but curriculum change can be a real opportunity as well as a challenge. During my time as a teacher and HOD I went through four major phases of curriculum revision. Each was challenging in its own right, but I learned a lot from each experience and became more able, over time, to find the opportunities.
Periods of curriculum change are invitations to go back and think about why we do this job of teaching young people about history. Revisiting our core purposes in teaching reminds us what we hold central: what ethics and desired outcomes are driving what we do as communities of history educators. Revisiting purposes also allows us to reflect upon and evaluate what we do now, often creating a spur to action. I can say from experience that just rushing into curriculum change without first looking at what is working is a recipe for a lot of heartache!
You could start this process anywhere but ‘why do we teach history?’ and ‘what do young people need from school history?’ are the exact questions which guided the creation of the Curriculum PATHS Principles for History Teaching, as well as the Schools History Project Principles. Either of these documents make a great kicking off point for personal or departmental reflections before undertaking curriculum change.
2. Know the Key Focuses from the CAR
Although we don’t know exactly what the revised curriculum will look like we do know that the drafting team has to stick to the remit set out in the government’s response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR). The CAR outlines a series of focuses – some of which are history specific and others of which are broader, overarching ones. Knowing these broad focuses helps in evaluating current practice and identifying priorty areas for change.
History Specific Focuses
- Developing disciplinary understanding and skills relating to how the past is studied and how historical claims are contested and constructed. Have a look at Jennie Brown’s great unit on why different kinds of histories matter – developed with advice from Hartman Deetz (Mashpee Wampanoag), Heather Hatton, Caroline Pennock and other members of the TIHPS team.
- Enabling pupils to critically appraise and work with historical sources. You can see a great example of this in this unit shared by Sasha Smith and Sarah Longair, or this great TIHPS unit on ‘Indigenous Tudors‘ created by Nicholas Caldwell with advice from Stephanie Pratt (Crow Creek Dakota and British/American), Caroline Dodds Pennock, and Kerry Apps.
- Building understanding the diversity of British history – including British Black and Asian histories. See Becky Carter’s unit on how equal Britain was post WW2 for some inspiration.
- Building understanding British history and Britain’s connections to the wider world. This brilliant collaboration unit looks at turning points in Caribbean identity.
- Learning about other civilisations and peoples in their own right. This unit on Zitkala-Sa and the Dakota might be a nice start.
- Engaging with local history and pupils’ own contexts.
Overarching Focuses
- Literacy – History’s role here doesn’t need much explanation but we can think about the range of ways we engage with literacy beyond the paragraph or essay.
- Oracy – History can promote oracy in support of literacy but also in its own right as a subject rooted deeply in argument and debate. This amazing ‘Tape Letters’ unit shared by Dan Lyndon-Cohen is a perfect example.
- Climate, environment and sustainability – History has significant contributions to make in terms of contextualising environmental impacts but also as a wider Humanities subject. This Curriculum PATH from Barbara Trapani is a great example of what is possible.
- Media literacy – History is very well placed to get pupils engaging critically with media both in the present and historically, especially in an AI age. This reminds me of a short unit I once ran on pamphleteering as propaganda in the British Civil Wars.
3. Work Together to Meet the Challenge
One of the great things about being a teacher is that we are almost never on our own in revising curriculum. However lonely it can feel sometimes, we can always reach out to the wider history teaching community for support, whether that’s through Curriculum PATHS, or other bodies like SHP, the HA, Teaching Indigenous Histories and Perspectives in Schools (TIHPS), Justice2History, Teach Climate History, BeBold Network, or many, many others.
At Curriculum PATHS we have been busy re-working our Sharing Hub so that it matches the focuses of the revised curriculum. We already have a whole range of units which might just provide that inspiration or way in you art looking for. Each unit on the Sharing Hub has direct links with the Curriculum PATHS Principles and fully explains its underpinning aims and ethics as well as linking to resources and wider reading.
But the real beauty of Curriculum PATHS is that the resources you find there are made by other history teachers for other history teachers so you can use it in a number of ways:
- Use the Curriculum PATHS Sharing Hub to get ideas and inspiration for new units or revising your existing units.
- Share your own planning via the Curriculum PATHS Sharing Hub and inspire others. It doesn’t need to be perfect and it’s super easy to create the padlet using our “create and share” link.
- Collaborate with others and share something. The Sharing Hub allows joint ownership of PATHS padlets so you can actually work with multiple people and even across context to create and share a unit. The template for sharing also makes a great tool for internal departmental thinking and sharing.
- Or just use the Curriculum PATHS Principles (also on the Sharing Hub) as a tool to evaluate your own curriculum.
4. Prepare for Evolution not Revolution
Time and again the DfE have stressed that what is coming is not a root and branch reform of the National Curriculum. Instead we are promised that this will be a process of clarification. Key trends which have shaped education over the past decade seem set to remain central – especially the focus on ‘knowledge-rich’ approaches to curriculum design and the prominence of sequencing and cognitive psychology. This may be greeted with mixed reactions, but I want to take the positive spin and say that this actually frees up more space to think harder about refining rather than completely redesigning what you have now.
That said, I do think this is also a key point to reflect on the limitations of not asking more fundamental questions about what has been lost along the way as we have moved towards particular teaching models. This blog offers some thoughts on why we might need a more radical reset of historical enquiry to really empower pupils.
A Suggested Timeline for History HODs and Subject Leads
To provide further support, Curriculum PATHS have developed a timeline of suggested actions for the next two years to ensure you can be fully prepared for Curriculum 2028. You will find this below. The guide is applicable across Key Stages 1-3, but may be speak more to Secondary heads of department or curriculum leaders, and Primary subject leads working across trusts. We hope to write a further guide for Primary subject leaders operating within smaller or single schools soon. I hope the guide is useful. Do let me know in the comments.
