Massive changes to curriculum, is it too late to change this?

[nycortaki]

This is not just about stonehenge, it is massive changes to maths, science, history, literature - phrases such as moving of goal posts and rewriting history do not come close!

I haven't read the full report yet

So you're all incensed about a report that you haven't actually read because you watched a video on YouTube?

Surely you’re on the wind up? No one is this stupid.

Is this about the Policy Exchange report into history published a couple of days ago?

"History in English secondary schools is generally in a strong
position. Whilst England’s improvements in international rankings in
English and Maths have been widely recognised, History is another area
where post-2010 reforms, reinforced by Ofsted’s greater focus on the
curriculum, have delivered success. At Key Stage 3 a clear majority of
schools offer a broad and balanced curriculum. History remains popular
at both GCSE and A Level, ranking as the fifth most popular subject for
both qualifications in 2024. At both GCSE and A Level students are taught
rigorous and varied courses, covering key themes and topics in the history
of Britain and the wider world in increasing detail."

How would you define “woke” OP and why do you object to it so much? I would define it as being considerate of and empathetic towards other people’s feelings. Why is that bad?

Oh and by the way you can’t state what views you do and don’t want to hear on here. It’s an open forum, anyone can comment within the talk guidelines. Ever heard of this little thing called freedom of speech?

Youtube videos are excellent for learning how to braid hair, fix a leaky tap or paint an IKEA unit. They are not a reliable source of information on current affairs.

Here's the full report if anyone can be arsed:

Lessons-from-the-Past-1.pdf

To which curriculum? The English one? Welsh? Scottish? French?

Are you one of those very annoying posters who thinks everyone on here is English? Or even worse, that the UK have its own education system?

Also, not a guy. 👍

Not a history teacher but I found the report overall balanced and pretty useful, including the bit on classroom resources where some teachers are choosing resources that don't support the goals of the curriculum or good overall practice. Not quite the massive changes up of the curriculum OP suggested...

The only bit I found frustrating was the suggestion of the fourth GCSE module being British history.... after an almost exclusively British history viewpoint at KS3 kids most kids don't have much knowledge of the other factors that were influencing what was going on in the UK at the time. Even the Reformation is pretty much entirely through a Tudor lens. (It works out very well for history nerd DS1 at the moment as even a small bit of "meanwhile in Germany" knowledge gets him easy extra marks.)

It would set GCSE students up much better for future history understanding and a better knowledge of history as a whole if such a unit was more world or even European focused, rather than a continued narrow "history only where we were directly involved" approach.

But that's personal preference rather than a "god it's all going to hell in a handcart." Because the report finds a lot of good in the history curriculum.

On this point:

• The curriculum at GCSE and A Level is too narrow and repetitive, with students studying narrow thematic studies like health through time and repeating the Tudors and Nazi Germany at the expense of broader topics.

Interesting that the “health through time” is seen as narrow - it’s actually one of the ones that covers a huge sweep of time, albeit through the focus of “health and the people” - covers 1000-present day. If you’re going to look at such a broad sweep of time, as 1/4 of a gcse syllabus, you’ll need at least some focus, and “whether Britain was winning in battles or not” isn’t necessarily better here.

Sounds great to me if it means that my child doesn’t have to suffer through Tudors/Industrial revolution/WW2 on rotation for their entire time at school then I’m all for these “woke” changes! I had to get to university before I was allowed to study anything I found personally interesting.

‘eg vast chunks of British history is no longer being taught‘

I mean British history is vast and there’s only so many hours in the school day.

i think I just did WW2 on repeat and know next to nothing about Scottish or Irish history. There’s probably bits of American history that more relevant to us today let alone Indian / China / carribean history.

but I guess thinking that makes me ‘woke’. And no I won’t click on a random you tube

I mean, if we want to go back to studying colonisation, we could always keep it close to home by focusing on Ireland. Because that was truly glorious. Oh, wait.

Well exactly. Vast chunks of British history has never been taught. It's nothing new. I'm in my 50s and we only really touched on the big hits like the battle of Hastings, the Tudors, the industrial revolution etc. After I left school and started reading history books for fun it was astonishing how much important history was ignored.

Health through time is such an amazing one to look at loads of different factors - I'm quite excited about DS1 getting to do it at GCSE!

Yes! Got to say my son wasn’t hugely interested by that section but we all really liked revising it with him! He loved the USA history bits the most. Doing a level history alongside maths, FM and physics now so he clearly enjoyed the course plenty!

Thanks for posting this. The bit that made me happy is that there seems to be a recognition that the primary school curriculum is overloaded.

I feel that I'm constantly rushing children because there's so much to cram in. That didn't happen when I started teaching.

Do you know how individual parents can feedback comments on this? Thanks

it was neither actually. but well done for being one of the few to watch it!

The point made here (and elsewhere) was that studying colonisation is not the same thing as agreeing with it. Just like studying the Soviet Union and Stalin including the good and the bad is not the same thing as vindicating the bad.

Just to expand a bit on your last bullet, which was the subject of the discussion in the video, the report says:

83% of schools surveyed had made changes to ‘diversify’ or ‘decolonise’ their history curriculums, with some ‘diversified’ curriculums adopted by several hundred schools. In some cases this had a positive effect, exposing students to varied and knowledge-rich studies that better cover key areas of British history such as the women’s suffrage movement, as well as a wider range of world history. However, in too many cases this process has gone too far, leading to the teaching of radical and contested interpretations of the past as fact, or with anecdotes of interesting lives replacing a deeper understanding of the core drivers of history. Numerous cases of poor-quality resources being used to teach contested narratives as fact have been identified. For example, one book used in classrooms claims black people built Stonehenge, whilst free resources produced by a subject organisation celebrate the genital mutilation of a slave as a form of ‘gender transition’.

This politicising of the curriculum may have been promoted by low quality teacher training. Research by Policy Exchange has found that amongst PGCSE programmes analysed, trainees receive on average just 17.8 days of subject specific training over the course of a yearlong programme. This means that too many new teachers lack the subjectspecific pedagogical knowledge to critically evaluate training and resources and ensure their teaching remains impartial. Furthermore, despite the limited time given to subject training, 76% of PGCE history courses include sessions on diversifying or decolonising the curriculum. Trainee reading lists also include articles advocating extreme conceptions of inclusive curriculums, such as an article on how black history month can fuel ‘micro-aggressions’ in black students, without a sufficient balance of alternative perspectives.

So, trying to ignore the inflammatory end of your post (!) you are right here, it is of course not an unproblematic or neutral process - but it is a process - and the issue which has been raised is that some of the new material has not quoted sources or set out its thinking at all, there has been no review and no process - this was raised by the exhead in the video. The issue which has been raised is that without any sort of review, the material is possibly made up or possibly misunderstanding basic info. We just don't know.

If you know your science and your history, it is unlikely that the celts or other peoples living in the northern hemisphere at the time of stonehenge had extensive melanin. But it might be that there is some new research which as yet no one has heard of to do with travel and if so, it is necessary for it to be examined.

If it is made up to somehow make people feel good, that is just extraordinarily patronising and many commentators of colour have said it is not what they want. It would be better to be teaching the extraordinary history of other world cultures including about kingdoms in africa (the empire of ghana c400-1200, the khanem-bornu empire c850, the towers of the great zimbabwe empire c1100-1400) and the muslim world such as the polyglots and extraordinary engineering and math development of the Ottoman empire. And also to teach about why the extraordinary and visionary attempts to establish stable countries in Africa, with decent housing and other services and to eradicate racism, many with socialist values, in Africa post wwII and it was western interference whcih caused significant problems (not sure if that is now contentious but it is certainly how we were taught about it at school).

I would define woke now (the meaning has changed) as at best promoting the interests of minority groups at the expense of the nation as a whole and succeeding in doing so because there are supporting minority activist groups which are heavily funded; and at worst in actual fact not even acting in the best interests of the minority groups which they say they want to support - for example here being very patronising. They often act at the expense of children's interests as most of the policies invariably do not take into account child developmental needs. Woke and extreme liberalism is not about fairness or justice as a previous poster has said, nor full of justice or empathy, I don't think, for those reasons.

I was tongue in cheek about asking people not to post but in all seriousness there is a large group of posters on MN who propagate extreme liberal ideals (and sometimes the ideals of funders) and they tend to dominate discussions on certain threads which form part of their "interest" - ie every thread on that subject - and because there are so many of them, and possibly because many of them might be part of well funded activist groups and so they have time and resources, and because they often shut down discussion by being very rude and disrespectful, gaslighting and projecting, making false accusations and linking docs which sometimes do not say what they say it will say so wasting people's time and requiring people to post to defend themselves endlessly, it can all get a bit much. It is why they are so effective at changing policies but it isn't to the best interest of the general population.

I am sure you aren't one of those posters though.

I'm confused as to how you think the selecting of which bits of History are and are not taught and the selection of interpretations of these events can ever be non political. Are you suggesting there is one objective truth when it comes to reporting significant moments in time and if so whose is it? Decolonising the curriculum is simply telling the story from another perspective. So you think there is only one true perspective? And we used to teach it before the woke brigade got their hands on the curriculum?

Actually if you read the think tank report which someone has linked in full it explains its policy recommendations and one of them is teaching a chronological history of Britain 1066 to present day so that there is a broad base of knowledge - from that children can explore what they find interesting - without that many children will simply be not aware and that cuts down on opportunities for them, the richness of their life etc.

I think to give a broad base awareness of major kingdoms and civilisations across the globe is also important.

Same for other subjects.