Keystage history bulletin – September 2024 Welcome back to a new term, a new government and new academic year of exciting developments here at Keystage history.
Many of you will be wondering if the Labour government will usher in radical changes to the curriculum which will entail yet another upheaval in schools at a time when most of you have got history in a good shape. They have said that there is a commitment to curriculum review but only making changes where change is needed, and retaining what is working well. I’m fairly confident that a major re-write will not be a priority and there is no Gove-like figure lurking with a his or her own agenda. Instead they promise to “Build on the hard work of teachers who have brought their subjects alive with knowledge-rich syllabuses, to deliver a curriculum which is rich and broad, inclusive, and innovative.’” What to expect from the new governmentI expect the curriculum balance in future to be redressed so that creative subjects are given more time. Humanities subjects will be more inclusive, possibly paying greater attention to global history. The independent review will be chaired by Professor Becky Francis CBE, an expert in education policy, including curriculum and social inequality. The government’s ambition is for a curriculum that delivers excellent foundations in reading, writing and maths, and ensures every young person gets the opportunity to develop creative, digital, and speaking and listening skills particularly prized by employers. The review seeks to make sure children benefit from a curriculum that represents them and their families, regardless of background, and equips young people to shape our response to the challenges of our changing world. The review will build on the hard work of teachers who have brought their subjects alive with knowledge-rich teaching, to deliver a new national curriculum which is rich and broad, inclusive and innovative. It reports next year. Evolution not revolution, seems to be the watchword and the review groups seems to be alive to the trade-offs required to deliver high and rising standards alongside greater breadth – in particular any recommendations that would increase workload. The group will be anxious not to try to fix things that aren’t broken. Fortunately, primary history is in good shape. Interestingly, it does appear that Labour will expect the new National Curriculum to be taught in Academies. Emphasis on inclusionAlongside this review, there is also a group working at the moment to produce a non-statutory exemplar curriculum which places a much greater emphasis on inclusion. However well-conceived and innovative this may be, the chances are that you will still need to do the leg work of resourcing it. Rest assured that Keystage history will be keeping a very close eye on this initiative and will be producing a full suite of fully-resourced lessons to accompany its launch, whenever that might be. Needless to say It is already overdue. In the meantime, we are pressing ahead with developing specific aspects of the site, namely assessment. We will continue to post outstanding lessons but we are conscious that what many you really like about the site is that someone has done the specialist thinking for you and made the hard choices about which questions to ask. Flooding Keystage history with even more ‘you might also like to do’ activities merely loses the tight structure that time constraints imposes on us. What we will be doing instead is returning to some of our lessons to ‘diamond polish’ them with additional or alternative resources that have emerged since the lessons were first taught. In terms of making the history curriculum more inclusive, we have ensured that we are continuing to build on last year’s initiatives. So at KS2 we already have a great thematic study on Black and British in addition to non-European units on Benin, Maya, Early Islamic civilization, and Shang China . Over the summer we have developed a new Y3 topic on Ancient Sumer, modern day Iraq, with one on the Indus valley to follow soon. Last year at KS1 we added a complete unit on Rosa Parks. How Keystage history improves standardsAll this talk of curriculum review must be seen against a realisation that National Curriculum history really isn’t the straightjacket that many people think. In the absence of any national history exam, we have no real idea how it is being interpreted by schools, how much time is being allocated to it and what students learn from the lessons they receive on it. What we do know is that history is taught best in countries where the curriculum is supported by resources and training uses these resources. That is why we spend most of our time carefully selecting key resources. That is also why we focus on detailed lesson descriptions which schools are kind enough to say contributes significantly to teachers’ professional development. So that is why we have wrestled with the thorny issue of assessment. Only when we know if the pupils have learned what we think we have taught will we know if the curriculum has worked. We recognise assessment as a crucial bridge between teaching and learning, hence the time spent on creating and testing carefully crafted assessment tasks linked to national expectations and backed up, where possible, with examples of pupils’ work. This may not ensure that the NC is properly taught but we think its the best solution out there for doing justice to disciplinary as well as factual knowledge, which too many assessment schemes focus on as the be- all-and-end-all. Updates to the Keystage history websiteWe have updated the website to now include all PPTX resources in Google Slides format in addition to the usual click to download, so they can be viewed ‘in page’ with no need to download if this is not required. You can also benefit from native Google Slides features such as running the presentation direct from your browser entering ‘full screen’ mode, and using the built in laser pointer and pen. 
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