Autumn 2009

We'd like to say a really big ‘thank you' to all of you who took part in our online survey about the implementation of the New Secondary Curriculum. There is plenty of generic evaluation going on, so it is especially valuable to have the views of so many history teachers. Thank you.

 

About 20% of you attended the initial regional conferences we held and most of you, 75% agreed that attending a conference helped you to understand the ‘Big Picture' behind the NSC and thus better understand the ideas behind the changes in history. You valued the practical advice on offer by teaching professionals. Again, just over 20% of you had attended regional/local network meetings run by our Regional Support Advisers, and the overwhelming majority of you found these incredibly helpful. The flexibility of RSAs to respond by phone, email or in person has had a positive impact on implementation. Judging by your responses the RSAs have done a really good job!

 

Nearly two-thirds of you said you had changed the content you teach - either to include topics/concepts that were previously under-represented, such as local history and empire; or had moved towards a more theme-based curriculum. Some of you had reduced content, in order to explore themes in more depth, whereas others had been forced to reduce content by the introduction of a skills-based curriculum or by being forced into a two-year KSt3.

 

Nearly half of you had made changes to emphasise Personal Learning & Thinking Skills, whereas rather fewer, about 35%, had made changes to place more emphasis on the non-statutory cross-curricular dimensions, although many of you were using ‘drop-down' days to increase cross-curricular working with other subjects. Perhaps not surprisingly, these work best when initiated by subjects, rather than being imposed by SMT.

 

The vast majority of you - over 70% viewed the changes as having a positive impact on teaching and learning, although surprisingly 20% of you had not made any changes at all, and over one third of you thought the changes SMT had made in response to the NSC had had a negative impact on history, and on teaching and learning.

 

Two important points were made time after time by many of you - that it is too early to tell yet what the impact will be, but also that you felt liberated and freed up to teach history in a more flexible/less constrained way that before - and that can only be for the good. The other comment that is obvious from many of your replies is that in many schools it is history that is leading the changes in response to the NSC, and that can only have a positive impact on history teaching and learning.

Alf Wilkinson, Dec 2009.