Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking through the national curriculum to ensure that adequate time is provided for teaching British history at key stage 3.

The National Curriculum is a framework setting out the content of what the Department expects schools to cover in each subject. The curriculum does not set out how subjects, or topics within the subjects, should be taught. The Department believes teachers should be able to use their own knowledge and expertise to determine how they teach their pupils, and to make choices about what they teach, and what time they provide for teaching specific topics.

As part of a broad and balanced education, all pupils should acquire a firm grasp of the history of the country in which they live, and how different events and periods relate to each other. That is why the history curriculum, taught in maintained schools for Key Stages 1 to 3, sets out, within a clear chronological framework, the core knowledge that will enable pupils to understand the history of Britain from its first settlers to the development of the institutions that help to define British national life today. The revised history curriculum taught in maintained schools from September 2014 placed a greater emphasis on pupils being taught British history in a clear chronological way rather than as a series of isolated and unrelated events. At Key Stage 3, the vast majority of the statutory themes are focused on British history.