The History Curriculum Needs Diversifying

Chris Evans MP | 29th June 2021 | Uncategorised

Within 48 hours, 100,000 people signed Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson’s petition calling for the Government to teach Britain’s colonial past as part of the UK’s compulsory curriculum. Launched in June 2020, it has since reached 240,000 signatories. Chris Evans, Labour MP for Islwyn and chair of the APPG on archives and history, makes the case for diversifying the history curriculum.

I am passionate about history and, above all, the way it is taught. When I did GCSE history many years ago, we studied Adolf Hitler’s Germany, crime and punishment, which was mainly about Jack the Ripper, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. That was it. I then did my A-levels, when we did the Tudors and the civil war—Oliver Cromwell, Charles I and all that. Our curriculum is just far too narrow. It is easy for the Government to point to the option of teaching topic 3—“Ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745 to 1901”—at key stage 3. However, it is not mandatory; it is only one of many topics that can be chosen by schools and teachers. It is clear that the signatories to the petition do not feel that this is enough, and I must agree with them. The Committee found that 45% of primary school teachers and 64% of secondary school teachers who responded to our survey disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement that: “The National Curriculum ensures that students in my sch...

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