Periodically, OFSTED offers a report that codifies the main findings of their most recent subject specific visits. The last major report was in 2011 but two years ago they also produced a summary of recent research findings into primary history. This report is lenghty, prolix and repetitive, so I have tried to distil what seem to me to be the most important points raised, not all of which I support. Where our views diverge or where I feel that key explication is lacking I have offered my own personal comments in italics. To ensure that the essence of OFSTED’s opinions is not lost I have tried to quote from the report at length without adding unduly to your task of ploughing through it all line by line, though you might want to!
1. Pupils get better at history as they develop their substantive and disciplinary knowledge
Not one OR the other. The skill is to intertwine the two, not just knowledge for its own sake. How is this best done? As you will see the site uses focused key questions to address the most central substantive (content) knowledge of a period in a way a historian would, thereby developing disciplinary knowledge such as causation or interpretations.
2. Leaders and teachers must make careful decisions about what content to emphasise in topics and lessons (sometimes referred to as ‘core knowledge’)
Leaders should focus on identifying the core knowledge that, if learned, will be most likely to help pupils make sense of future learning. Some aspects of historical knowledge that may be particularly important for future learning are:
• knowledge of the immediate topic or context
• knowledge of broad features of the period and overviews of developments
• knowledge of terms, concepts and phenomena that recur in later topics
Much is made throughout the document of how learning one topic might help inform later learning. In my view its not always easy to see how this can be done with very young children ,other than through the chronological lens. But by identifying which concepts are going to be developed in depth in each topic you can quickly develop and overview from which to plot progression. Imagine a conversation with the children which runs like this: I know that you looked at the consequences of X with Mrs Jones last year in your topi on Y. In this topic we’re looking at consequences again, but this time in the topic Z’.
3. The report focuses as lot on guidance given to teachers
I quote “Other schools set more specific goals, such as ‘Know about the relationship between city states, including examples of trade and war’. This gave teachers more precise guidance to support planning and assessment”.
Whilst I find this a rather arcane example, the principle of being explicit in terms of what you want pupils to know and understand lies at the heart of good planning and needs to be an indelible feature of the learning objectives for each history topic.
4. OFSTED is critical of plans which tended to focus only on developing broad skills and competencies
Rather than on how pupils would achieve these broad aims. In a few schools, clear plans were in place for key stage 2, but plans for key stage 1 did not give teachers enough guidance on what pupils needed to know and do.
5. OFSTED is critical of Early Years provision
In most schools, plans for what children should know and be able to do by the end of Reception were limited to knowledge about ‘time’ and ‘the past’. There was just one school where leaders took a wider view and specified important vocabulary and concepts, such as farming, which children could encounter in Reception, and which would help them learn specific history topics in the future. In this school, children were well prepared for what they went on to learn in history.
All this underlines the need for all teachers to know what learning will follow. What are they building towards? How will our topic on toys help with the later topic on Going to the Seaside? Mind you, the example of farming is singularly unhelpful, as I’ve hardly ever found a KS1 history topic where that features prominently! Have you?
6. OFSTED is keen on learning journeys
“In some schools, leaders went beyond simply identifying broad themes that occurred across the curriculum. Instead, they had planned a learning journey that built pupils’ knowledge of particular themes. For example, in one school, leaders had explicitly planned how pupils’ knowledge about religion in the past would become more complex over time, through a range of meaningful examples”.
7. But it warns against superficial themes and ‘golden threads’
“ In other schools, leaders had identified important concepts for pupils to learn, but did not relate them as carefully to what pupils would learn in the future. In some cases, leaders had identified recurring concepts or ‘themes’ because they believed that this was required. However, they had not considered how these could support pupils in their future learning. In these schools, leaders had often identified retrospectively where themes recurred in their curriculum. They had not planned how pupils would develop increasingly complex knowledge of these over time. For example, in one school, leaders had identified a theme of ‘religion’ across topics such as classical Greece, Rome and Maya. However, across these topics, pupils simply expanded their knowledge of a range of ancient gods. They did not develop deeper conceptual knowledge, for example, about the importance of religion to people or the relationship between religion and political power.”
To me this last example seems like a tall order for many of our Y5 pupils but the principle that you might want to look at the different role that religion played in societies at different times and places is sound.
8. “In some schools, the range of important themes that leaders had identified was narrow”
For example, in one school, these were power, religion, society and empire. Even if these were had been thoroughly developed, they would not have covered what pupils needed to know to access the breadth of the curriculum. In other schools, pupils learned about a wider range of concepts, but they were taught simple definitions of these, which did not always reflect the way they were used in the context of history topics. For example, pupils learned a definition of ‘invasion’ that did not capture the typical features of invasions in the period they were studying.
In some school leaders had also identified important themes across the curriculum. However, they had only identified ‘leadership’ and ‘society’. Leaders had identified existing curriculum content that fitted into these themes, but they had not considered what teachers could teach or emphasise to build pupils’ knowledge of these meaningfully. Although pupils encountered these words regularly, they were taught them as simple items of vocabulary, rather than being given meaningful examples to help them to build complex schema relating to these ideas. Leaders had not considered what children in Reception could learn in order to begin to develop their knowledge of these themes.
9. OFSTED stresses the need for a clear chronological framework
”Connected historical knowledge requires pupils to have secure knowledge of broad chronological frameworks and longer-term developments, as well as knowledge of the broader features of particular historical periods and places. This is likely to include knowledge of specific events and developments, although these need to be situated within a secure chronological framework.
Have you used Timebox as described on the site along with all the resources you need? In a few very effective cases, leaders had gone beyond ‘timeline knowledge’ and considered pupils’ ‘sense of period’ and their knowledge of broad characteristics of particular historical periods and ‘big stories’ about the past (for example how technology led to changes in organisation of early human civilisations).
10. Knowledge of the immediate topic
Ofsted stresses the need to provide sufficient knowledge of the immediate topic, a secure knowledge of important developments, or an understanding of people’s values and attitudes in that time and place.. This allows them to think historically and construct accounts or arguments. “In the weakest schools, pupils were asked to consider questions or complete tasks that they simply lacked the knowledge to do successfully. For example, in one school, pupils were asked to explain the purpose of a number of artefacts from Pharaonic Egypt. However, they had not been taught about Egyptian religious rituals or funeral practices. They would have needed this knowledge to make meaningful inferences. As a result, pupils were forced to guess or to fill gaps with their ‘everyday’ knowledge (drawing on common sense or modern experience in ways that were not helpful in the particular context)”.
11. In some schools, leaders framed topics using valid historical enquiry questions
“For example, in one school, the teacher asked, ‘What do we know about the impact of the Blitz?’ These questions led teachers to plan substantive knowledge of time and place, while developing specific knowledge about how historians might study a particular event, phenomenon or society. Pupils in this school learned how historians might use different types of sources to answer different kinds of questions about the past. In schools where enquiry questions were well designed, and leaders had carefully planned what pupils needed to know in order to address the enquiry question meaningfully, pupils were often very successful and highly engaged in answering these questions”.
12. OFSTED criticises poor use of enquiry questions
“In some schools, enquiry questions were used simply as topic headings, and the curriculum did not identify a range of knowledge that would allow pupils to answer the particular enquiry question. Without the clear focus an enquiry question should provide, it was difficult for teachers to identify the most crucial knowledge for pupils to learn and, therefore, for them to teach and assess.In some schools, the ‘historical’ questions that pupils were asked to consider were poorly grounded in the traditions of historical enquiry. Often, pupils used present lenses to make judgements on questions such as ‘Who was the best monarch?’ or ‘Were Viking punishments fair?’ These questions encouraged pupils to draw on their modern understanding of leadership or fairness, rather than helping them to understand differences in the ideas and values of people in past societies. They also resulted in teaching that was less focused on how historians learn about and communicate ideas about past societies.”
“In the best examples, leaders made sure that pupils were taught about how historians study the past through specific examples. In one school, teachers gave the example of historians using images on Classical Greek pottery and other sources to reconstruct aspects of religion and culture in Athens. In this school, Year 6 pupils demonstrated secure knowledge of how historians use sources. In a few schools, leaders were clear about the limitations of asking pupils to make their own judgements without also teaching them how historians do this and developing secure knowledge of the particular topic or context.”
13. When teaching historical interpretations
“Teachers in many schools focused on pupils ‘forming their own interpretations’ about the past without teaching them how historians and others do this. In other schools, historical significance was conflated with ‘impact’. Pupils made ‘everyday’ judgements about who or what was significant, without learning how and why historians and others might disagree about the significance of people or events.
A question such as ‘How significant was the invention of the steam engine?’ is a question about impact (and therefore relates to the historical concept of consequence). To consider a question such as ‘How significant was the Blitz?’, pupils need to learn that significance is something that is ascribed to historical phenomena, and that different people at different times might have different judgments about what is significant.”
14. How sources are used by historians is often badly taught
“In around two thirds of the schools visited, teachers focused on pupils forming their own judgements about sources and about the past, without first securing the knowledge they needed to do this in a meaningful way. They devoted significant lesson time to this and did not spend enough time developing pupils’ knowledge of the past to enable them to engage more meaningfully with sources. As a result, pupils often relied on ‘everyday’ thinking, or on simplistic tips and tricks, to make these judgements. For example, pupils dismissed an account from an Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as not reliable because it mentioned dragons, even though this source provides valuable information for historians. This often taught or embedded misconceptions about historians and how they study the past.
For example, in some schools, pupils were taught to differentiate between primary and secondary sources. They had learned simplistic judgements, such as that sources from the time are less reliable than later sources. In other schools, pupils were still taught to spot, and comment negatively on, ‘bias’ in sources. Assessments and feedback suggested that teachers often wrongly inferred from this that pupils were making their own judgements, or that they had made progress in their thinking about history.”
15. Ensuring breadth and depth between year groups
“In most schools, leaders had not considered how content choices in Reception or key stage 1 might help to prepare children with knowledge and vocabulary necessary for later study. Typically, content choices were based on existing practice or the availability of resources. For example, most schools taught about the great fire of London in depth at key stage 1, but leaders had not generally identified what knowledge pupils could develop from this topic that would help them later.”
16. Connecting the learning
In some schools, curriculum planning and teaching helped pupils to:
• connect their knowledge of different places and times
• put developments into broader frameworks, and
• develop knowledge of contrasting and related developments and contexts
17. Comparing ancient civilizations at KS2
“Some schools missed opportunities to develop pupils’ knowledge of longer-term developments. For example, in a number of schools, teaching about ‘early civilisations’ was limited to a single case study, most commonly of Pharaonic Egypt. Few schools made the most of the national curriculum recommendation to teach pupils an overview of the development of the earliest civilisations.”
18. Broadening the range of topics at KS1
“In many schools, leaders had recently introduced new studies of individuals to the history curriculum. This aimed to broaden the range of people and groups studied. In a few schools, leaders had made sure that pupils learned these alongside secure knowledge of the historical context. They made sure that teachers reflected the diversity and complexity of different experiences when teaching about events and developments”.
19. Diversity
“in some schools, pupils developed misconceptions about the experiences of particular groups. This was because teachers had not accurately represented the complexity and diversity of experiences in the past, or because they had introduced individual stories without teaching about the broader context that made these stories meaningful. For example, in one school, pupils learned about Rosa Parks but were not taught about the wider context of African-American civil rights in the USA. Pupils had misconceptions, for example, that segregation was limited to public transport, that African-American experiences were identical in all parts of the USA, and that Rosa Parks was the first person to challenge segregation.
In these schools, pupils often viewed groups as homogenous and assumed that large groups of people had similar experiences.
20. Making connections
In some schools, pupils’ knowledge about different topics had developed into richer and more connected knowledge about the past. For example, in one school, pupils demonstrated secure knowledge about a range of early civilisations. Most pupils could also reflect on important commonalities and differences between societies and developments, such as the importance of trade and resources. This was generally the case where teachers regularly helped pupils to connect information across topics through their explanations.
21. Teaching approaches
“Teachers need to choose activities that emphasise and revisit important content and concepts to make sure that all pupils learn and remember them, while ensuring that new information is taught within a context that makes this meaningful for pupils. Narratives and stories are a highly effective way of teaching new content in history.
When supporting pupils with SEND or with gaps in their knowledge, it is more important to make sure that pupils can access the curriculum (by securing knowledge of important content and concepts) than to engineer access to the immediate task by adapting it.
In some schools, teachers regularly revisited important content and concepts, either through specific activities or through high-quality explanations. This was particularly effective when teachers helped pupils to understand bigger ideas and underlying concepts as they reoccurred in new contexts, or to connect the material they had learned into broader frameworks and narratives. For example, in one school, teachers drew pupils’ attention to the importance of geographical features in the development of early civilisations across a range of topics.
Using stories Some schools recognised the importance of stories to history teaching. Teachers made highly effective use of narrative, stories and context to make content meaningful for pupils. For example, in one school, pupils had developed a secure understanding of the experiences of enslaved people in North America.
The teacher achieved this through a careful combination of broader context and a range of individual stories. In another school, pupils had been taught detailed content about medieval Baghdad. This gave them secure knowledge of broader ideas, such as the impact of intellectual and scientific developments, the importance of trade and the development of cities. Stories were often used very effectively in Reception, particularly where teachers had identified important vocabulary or concepts that could be learned effectively through a particular story.”
22. Making sure pupils know enough before starting an activity
“In some schools, teachers did not always consider what pupils needed to know in order to make sense of new material or engage meaningfully with activities and historical questions. Often, this was a result of teachers focusing on pupils making their own judgments in order to ‘think like a historian’. One typical example was teachers asking pupils to make inferences from sources without knowing enough about the context. This approach often had a number of negative effects on pupils’ learning.
First, it meant that pupils’ responses were based on guesswork, because they did not know enough about the topic. This often led to misconceptions or gaps in their knowledge. Often, these were not addressed or challenged, as teachers considered that pupils had been successful in the task (because they had made a judgment). Second, this approach taught pupils to conflate guesswork with ‘historical thinking’. This resulted in misconceptions about disciplinary knowledge. Third, this approach was time intensive. Pupils spent much of their lesson time making guesses, which left limited time for learning about the time and place they were studying.”
23. Support for pupils with SEND
“Support for pupils with SEND and for pupils who struggled to access the curriculum because of gaps in their knowledge was generally not planned well. Leaders and teachers in some schools had a limited understanding of how to help these pupils access the history curriculum. In other schools, teachers focused on adapting a particular task, for example by using writing frames or scaffolds, so that pupils could access it.
However, they had not considered how to support pupils to access the curriculum by making sure that they developed secure knowledge of what was being taught, or by addressing gaps in what they already knew. In one school, leaders had significantly lower expectations for some pupils. Here, tasks were often differentiated into a ‘lower-’, ‘middle-’ and ‘higher-ability’ format, and the ‘lower-ability’ tasks focused less on pupils learning historical content.”
24. In the best examples (of assessment) we saw
Teachers had a clear, shared understanding of the content and concepts that pupils needed to know, and they focused assessment on these. In these schools, teachers checked pupils’ understanding of new content. For example, in a lesson on developments in farming and technology in the Iron Age, the teacher used a series of short questions to check whether pupils had understood key developments. Pupils wrote their answers on whiteboards, and the teachers checked that all pupils were secure in this knowledge. This enabled them to pick up gaps and misconceptions and address them quickly. In a few schools, teachers returned to important content and concepts regularly, to check that pupils’ knowledge of these remained secure. However, in around a third of schools, the way these assessment approaches was implemented did not help teachers to identify specific gaps and misconceptions.
25. “Poor assessment practice”
In around a third of schools visited, pupils were only very infrequently assessed in history. In around half, assessment focused on trivial details or seemingly disconnected facts about topics. In just under half the schools visited, teachers allocated broad labels to pupils, which purported to describe their ‘progress’ in history. However, in many cases, these judgements were made without teachers having a clear shared understanding of what pupils needed to know from the school’s curriculum. In some cases, teachers’ judgements were based on poor proxies for pupils’ progress, such as the quality of work in their books, or how well they engaged in lessons.
In others, teachers identified evidence of broad history ‘skills’, such as ‘asking historical questions’ or ‘using more than one source of evidence’, but they did not consider whether pupils had secure knowledge of what they had learned. This often led to teachers giving pupils vague or imprecise feedback on their work.
26. Quality assurance
In a few schools, quality assurance in history was markedly more sophisticated. For example, in one school, leaders used a range of approaches to check whether pupils were learning history securely and in depth. They had identified subject-specific aspects of quality to consider across the school. Examples included the extent to which pupils were secure in their knowledge of the historical context of periods they had studied, and how well teachers used smaller stories and narratives to teach pupils about broader developments and contexts.
27. Training
“In most of the schools visited, teachers lacked expertise or training in teaching how historians study the past and construct their accounts. In around half the schools visited, teachers had misconceptions about national curriculum guidance on historical concepts. This led them to focus on pupils making shallow judgements about historical significance or constructing their own ‘interpretations’ of the past without having learned enough about how historians and others study the past and construct accounts”.
