History Teaching

Debate between Chris Skidmore and Eric Ollerenshaw

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Skidmore]

The decline has been a slow one. I do not wish to make party political points during this debate. David Cannadine’s excellent new book, “The Right Kind of History”, shows that these debates have been going round in circles since the early part of the 20th century and that lamenting the decline of history is nothing new. What is new is that we are competing in an international market against other countries, the pupils of which are being rigorously taught and assessed in all subjects and are driving forward in a way that our pupils are not.

There are some schools in which pupils take history to 16. My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) has mentioned a grammar school in his constituency. It is of interest to me that while the numbers taking history GCSE have been declining in comprehensive schools, they have been increasing in grammar schools since 1997. Although we have 29.5% of pupils in comprehensive schools taking history GCSE, we have 55% of pupils in grammar schools taking history and 48% in independent schools. The gap between grammar schools and comprehensive schools in terms of the proportion of pupils who are taking history GCSE has increased from 17.4% in 1997 to 24.9% in 2010, which is a real problem. The growing divide in education is no longer just about standards in different parts of the country but about the subjects that we choose to take at school. I worry how that will affect our national identity.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate and pursuing the topic. Does he agree that part of the decline began in the 1970s? Let me declare an interest here; I was a teacher in the 1970s. History teachers were almost compelled to change the nature of what they were teaching to encompass what is known today as the schools history project. Instead of teaching the narrative, teachers were forced to try to teach 11, 12 and 13-year-olds to become historians. What happened then was a loss of confidence and interest in what history teachers were trying to do.

[Chris Skidmore]

When we look at the nature of the curriculum itself, we see that there have been historical problems. My hon. Friend was a secondary school history teacher before he entered this House and therefore has a wealth of experience—probably more than me—of what actually happens in schools with teaching history. He also knows that, although we may talk about the curriculum and assessment and examination structures, if we are going to make history compulsory to 16, for pupils themselves history will only be as good as the teachers who teach it, which is obviously a crucial issue. We all remember our great teachers when we were at school. I had great history teachers, which was one reason why I ended up on the road to becoming a historian before I entered this place.

The Ofsted report, “History for all”, showed that history teaching was “good” or “outstanding” in 63 out of the 83 primary schools that Ofsted assessed, and “good” or “outstanding” in 59 out of 83 secondary schools that it assessed. Nevertheless, the report expressed genuine concerns about the quality of the subject training for teachers.