New curriculum ‘could put pupils off history at six’

Bev Forrest, a teaching fellow at Leeds Trinity University, said academics, school teachers and museum staff were worried about the impact of asking children to plough through a long list of complex subject areas from the age of six.

She told the Yorkshire Post it was unrealistic to expect children at the start of primary school to learn about concepts such as civilisation, democracy and monarchy.

And she warned that the Department for Education’s “heavily prescriptive” curriculum would not leave time or freedom for pupils to learn about more recent local history which could impact on museums that cater for school visits.

She has helped to create the Northern History Forum to allow anyone with an interest in the teaching of the subject to meet and debate issues.

Last month more than 100 teachers attended an event in Leeds to discuss their concerns over the proposed new curriculum and future events will be held to help staff find ways of making it work once a final version of it is agreed.

She said: “The plan is to cover subjects in a chronological order but this means that in Key Stage One children will be asked to learn about the concept of nation, civilisation, monarchy, parliament, democracy. How do you go about teaching this to a six-year-old? And there are no resources around for teachers to be able to teach a lot of this material.”

Ben Walsh, the deputy president of the Historical Association, who attended last month’s Northern History Forum event, said: “There has been a tendency to denigrate education generally and people can make an assumption that kids don’t know history like they used to.

“But there is a lot of research which shows that these myths of a golden age of history teaching are exactly that – myths.

“There has never been an age when all history was taught all of the time to all of the kids. The first problem is that the new curriculum seems to be predicated on wishful thinking rather than practical realities.”

Mr Walsh said there were concerns about the age appropriateness of parts of curriculum as part of a plan to get children to learn about key events in British history in a chronological order.

He also warned the list of topics covered – 25 different events or ages in Key Stage Two alone –would be difficult for teachers to cover given the limited time devoted to history in primary school each week.

There are also concerns that the way the curriculum is set up will impact on museum visits.

A spokeswoman for the National Museum Director’s Council warned that the current structure of the curriculum meant the support and resources that museums can offer would “not be fully utilised”.

“Feedback from teachers state that the main reason for their visit is to support the curriculum,” she said. “Museums bring subjects to life because of the availability of objects to look at and handle, and activities based around how people lived.

“Key Stage Two is the optimum time to do these sorts of visits: children are receptive to this sort of learning at that age and it inspires their interest in the subject, and there is more time in the school calendar to spend outside the classroom.

“Subjects such as the Victorians and the Second World War, neither of which feature in the curriculum, lend themselves to being taught in this way.

“Being able to teach children the experience of working in a mine or mill, or being an evacuee in the Second World War at the age when this could have happened to them is evocative and memorable, and being able to use museums so that they can better understand that experience inspires them to continue their study of history.”