Schools: Model History Curriculum

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government who they are consulting on the content of the new model history curriculum.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

We will work with history curriculum experts, historians and school leaders to develop a model history curriculum that will stand as an exemplar of a knowledge-rich, coherent approach to teaching history. The model history curriculum will build on the history curriculum and support teachers to make sure that all children can benefit from the breadth and depth of content in the national curriculum. We will shortly announce the panel supporting this work.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, those of us who remember Mrs Thatcher’s attempts to reshape the national history curriculum, David Cameron’s praise for teaching our island story, as he would put it, and Michael Gove’s calls for a more coherent patriotic history are concerned that authoritarian states teach a patriotic history; democratic states should teach debate and inquiry. Are the Government still committed to the fifth of the six aims stated in the 2013 definition of the national curriculum, which says we want students to

“understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously”—

I know some Ministers are not very keen on evidence—

“to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed”?

That is what secondary school students should be taught in history.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I do not recall Margaret Thatcher’s reforms to the history curriculum but I may have been a beneficiary of them. I should be clear to the noble Lord that the model history curriculum does not change the national history curriculum. It is designed to be an additional resource to help teachers, where they choose to use it, to fully develop their approach, consistent with the 2013 national curriculum on history and with the principles that he pointed out in his question.