The literacy strategy is here to stay and has profound implications for the teaching of history in primary schools. Primary history practitioners realise, of course, that the literacy strategy presents challenges as well as opportunities. On the one hand, a more explicit emphasis upon the ‘basic’ skill of literacy means history is potentially squeezed in terms of time. On the other hand, if a strong case can be made that history is not only important for cultivating literacy but is actually essential for the promotion of creative, well argued and substantiated writing, communication and language, then the literacy strategy has exciting potential for the teaching of history in primary schools.