History Matters: creating 'joined-up' resources for a diverse history curriculum

The new National Curriculum for Schools in England came into force in September 2014 in the wake of prolonged controversy, notably around the revisions to the English and History curricula.
The History National Curriculum was particularly controversial, accused of being overly focused on a narrowly conceived and celebratory British 'island story' at the expense of a more global outlook and content. Moreover, the 'island' narrative was heavily criticised for promoting a homogeneous account of 'British identity' and 'British history', which erased its global/imperial past, its long history of migration and the foundations of contemporary multicultural Britain. A campaign by Operation Black Vote in 2012 to retain key black figures in the curriculum garnered over 36,000 signatures, including leading politicians, while a 2015 recent campaign to make black history a mandatory part of the primary curriculum received nearly 44,000 signatures.

While the revised curriculum addressed some of these concerns, and offers the opportunity for study of ancient civilisations, slavery and non-European histories, there is still little scope for engaging with Britain's diverse history 'at home'. Accordingly, in December 2014, the OCR exam board revealed its plans to introduce a new GCSE history module 'Migration into Britain', exploring the impact of migration on Britain over the past 2000 years - the first and, to date, only module of its kind. However, the content and resources underpinning this module are as yet undeveloped.

Our previous two successful AHRC funded follow-on projects 'Making Histories' and 'History Lessons', which used oral and local histories to explore migration to Britain, revealed both an appetite for black British histories amongst pupils and teachers, and uncertainty on the part of teachers as to how to teach diversity, as well as a lack of available resources. This lack of easily accessible resources, along with the increased demands on teachers' time and expertise, is likely to doom the OCR's and other future initiatives to failure. However, our previous projects also demonstrate a strong willingness by academics, museums and archives, oral and local historians and black history archives, as well as teachers, to collaborate on producing materials that can be adopted by teachers and schools.

The current project plans to build on previous research experience and collaborative links to develop coherent and accessible resources to support the teaching of diverse histories at Key Stage 4 (GCSE). In partnership with Runnymede and the OCR exam board, we will bring together a range of academics, historians, teachers and stakeholders, to develop an innovative online interactive website, which examines the history of migration to Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries, and explores the various migration flows that have shaped contemporary multicultural Britain.

The project seeks to engage a range of partners and stakeholders in a unique collaborative venture aimed at diversifying the history curriculum and producing appropriate, innovative and accessible online resources to support teachers and pupils in this process. Drawing on similar research-based websites and resources, such as those dealing with slavery, the project will facilitate a 'joined-up' approach to curriculum development and support, bringing together academic research, schemes of work, primary resources and supporting material to provide a 'one stop shop' for schools, teachers and young people wishing to teach or study Britain's diverse histories.

Our previous projects represent a groundbreaking partnership between the AHRC, academic researchers and the Runnymede Trust. The work to date has disseminated the findings of the original 'Bengal diaspora' research to a broad audience outside of the academy, including community groups, national, local and community media, policymakers and practitioners, and young people and schools. The two follow-on projects involved project work with over 230 young people in 7 schools in 5 cities around England and Wales and has been adopted by 4 of these schools as part of their KS3 curriculum. The project brought together national and local museums and archives with community based resources and the current project will draw on, and extend these connections as an integral part of the website design. The earlier projects formed the basis of two highly rated impact case studies for the Department of History in Cambridge and the Department of Sociology at the LSE in REF2014.

The Banglastories website received nearly over 33,000 'hits' worldwide and over 1600 visits to the accompanying teaching resource in the period March 2014-March 2015. The 'Telling Community History' site, launched in November 2012, and the updated 'Making History' re-launched in November 2014 had nearly 3,500 unique visitor visits in the same period. The accompanying 'History Lessons' film on YouTube has had over 300 views since November. The co-authored 'Making British Histories' publication published in the high profile Runnymede Perspectives series informed Runnymede's invited briefing to Michael Gove's office on the history curriculum and played a significant role in the successful OBV campaign to retain black history in the curriculum (over 35,000 signatures), while the latest 'History Lessons' publication and expert roundtable has generated considerable interest from leading professional organisations (Royal Historical Society, Historical Association, NUT, TeachFirst) and civil society institutions (Migration Museum, Museum of London, National Maritime Museum, AIURRRC), local media, as well as politicians, academics in education, history and sociology fields. This earlier research and publication underpins the collaborations in the proposed project. There has been positive coverage of the projects across social media, such as Twitter.

These earlier projects provide a strong foundation and template for the proposed website. Building on this profile and established links from education and museum sectors, the project team will work closely with the OCR exam board to develop resources to support their new GCSE module on Migration to Britain, which goes onstream in September 2016. OCR is the largest UK Awarding Body for GCSE History - offering a pool of over 93,000 potential students for their new unit. There has been extensive national press coverage of this new unit and it is expected to have a high take-up. The timing of this new resource, and the partnership with OCR, will maximise profile for, and engagement with, the new website, as will the collaboration with leading academics, museums and archives. We will seek OCR official endorsement for the website/resource, and OCR have agreed to publicise it through their website, an email update which goes to c3500 recipients (the majority of which are heads of department). We are also working closely with Martin Spafford of the Schools History Project, which is partnered with OCR to produce resources, and which may also be used to promote the resource.

The new resource will be launched at a high profile event in Parliament, hosted by the APPG on Race and Community, and on Runnymede's respected Race Card online publication, which has over 3600 subscribers, including government ministers and departments, and the Runnymede website has 4000 unique visitors per month. This event will be used to generate policy debate around education policy, diversity and equality at a national level.