An HMI View of History in Secondary Schools:
Successes, Challenges and Opportunities
This review summarises Michael Maddison’s presentation at the 2009 SHP Conference. Michael is Ofsted's Specialist Adviser for History.
Michael’s presentation formed the first part of the final plenary: History and the Whole Curriculum. The plenary focussed on the potential power of history in the whole curriculum.
The session included two case studies:
• Helena Dovey shared a Year 9 oral history enquiry that made history the hub of the curriculum at Cirencester Deer Park School.
• Donald Cumming outlined the ways in which SHP principles have impacted on the whole curriculum at the Ridings School.
Michael’s presentation is very helpful in identifying what makes history such a success in schools. It outlines some whole-school and departmental challenges, and provides ten questions to help chart the way forward.
Download the Guidance
Download the material here.
This review as a WORD document [ click here ]
Michael's PowerPoint [ click here ]
History Successes in Secondary Schools
Michael listed the successes for history in secondary schools as:
• Good teaching
• Good teachers’ subject knowledge
• Effective leadership and management
• History is enjoyable and popular
• Students acquire knowledge and understanding in depth
• Good development of enquiry skills and source evaluation - investigation, extraction, evaluation and communication
• High standards and good achievement
‘It makes you think’ (Student Year 9)
The associated statistics that provide evidence of the numerical success of history in schools is provided on Michael's PowerPoint [ click here ].
Departmental Challenges
The challenges within a department are to address:
• Insufficiently focussed assessment on subject-specific objectives, e.g. progression in skills
• Marking insufficiently precise to help students improve
• Insufficient challenge for the most able
• Limited British Isles history and too little local history
• Absence of an overarching rationale leading to an unbalanced curriculum at KS3
Whole School Challenges
Across the whole school, the challenges are to address:
• Insufficient curriculum liaison between Years 6 and 7
• Student recruitment to exam courses at GCSE and the falling proportion of students taking GCSE history
• Growth of vocational learning & new subjects 14-19
• Reduced time allocation at KS3 leading to fleeting coverage and restricted number of topics in depth
• Whole school curriculum pressures - greater emphasis on thematic teaching and the skills-based curriculum
So what can we do?
Ten questions for you to answer are:
1. How will the primary curriculum changes help my Year 7 students to be better prepared to achieve at KS3?What can we do to help our feeder primary teachers?
2. Do we have a clear rationale for our KS3 history curriculum?
3. What contribution have we made, are we making and can we make to the school’s work on ‘Britishness’, identity, diversity, citizenship, community cohesion and political literacy?
4. How effective is our work in teaching emotive and controversial issues such as the Holocaust and the slave trade?
5. Do we ensure relevance in what and how we teach history to young people in our school in 21st century Britain?
6. Which cross-curricular links will be the most effective in enhancing the students’ experience in history?
7. What can we offer through increased cross-curricular links to students and other departments in and beyond the school?
8. How could thematic teaching and a skills-based curriculum improve the achievement and progress of students in their historical knowledge, understanding and skills?
9. What could thematic teaching and a skills-based curriculum achieve that history (and other foundation subjects) on their own and through increased cross-curricular links could not achieve?
10. What circumstances do we need to engender to ensure that curriculum innovation, which enhances learning in history, flourishes?
Final Thoughts – History Matters
The importance of history is:
History fires pupils’ curiosity and imagination, moving and inspiring them with the dilemmas, choices and beliefs of people in the past. (QCA, KS3)
‘History stops people believing rubbish’ (Student age 12)
‘History has taught me to read between the lines’ (Student age 16)
Subjects matter – history matters.
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