Monday 3 November. Curriculum for Cohesion contributes to a Runnymede Trust event discussing the future of History education

By Dr. Matthew Wilkinson

Dr. Matthew Wilkinson participated in a fascinating and useful roundtable event organised by the Runnymede Trust at King’s College London entitled, ‘How diverse and broad will the new history curriculum prove to be?’ The event was attended by 30 academics, teachers, think-tank members and charity group members to discuss how teachers can provide a genuinely diverse and useful history provision from the new specification of the National Curriculum for History. Amongst interesting presentations was a call from Professor Peter Mandler, President of the Royal Historical Society, for British universities to increase and improve the quota and quality of non-European and non-American History that they teach, which at present comprises only 13% of the History provided by UK universities.

Matthew gave a well-received presentation entitled, ‘Is there still a need for a diverse history curriculum – does the new curriculum address this?’ This paper made the case that all pupils will benefit from a genuinely diverse historical provision which can be achieved by teachers by removing the absent curriculum in History at the level of policy, departmental schemes-of-work and the classroom. For further details, please refer to: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220272.2013.869838#.UvtRg2J_tsN