The Historical Association Primary History Survey 2024

Children love history – it is accessible, interesting, there is a growth in diversity of content and it is inclusive for different abilities, according to our survey. This is down to the hard work and dedication of their teaching and support staff. It is great news for our young people. But for how long?

Sadly, our survey results reveal that a majority of teachers find the content too much and the National Curriculum too restrictive – however, that might be down to the fact that so few teachers are allowed to access school-funded CPD on the subject to enable them to fully understand the flexibility offered by the National Curriculum. That is one concern arising from the Historical Association primary survey 2024. If the subject is popular with pupils and known to be a subject that improves knowledge in other subjects as well as being an essential part of all children’s formative education, why is it not supported more for teachers’ professional development? The reality is that 40% of schools do not use Pupil Premium funding to support history in any way: instead the money is used only for the improvement of a few subjects rather than for the education of the whole child.

The 2024 survey indicates a slowly improving picture for history-focused CPD among primary teachers, but this is not consistent. Teachers deserve to be provided with quality CPD throughout their teaching career and they need that CPD to address more than whole-school issues: it needs to focus on what, why and how they teach.

Funding is of course a factor, but as more primary schools become a part of a Multi Academy Trust, an increasing priority needs to be ensuring that individual teachers have full confidence in the subject and curriculum that they are teaching and are not simply relying on the lesson plans that are provided from generic sources. That can only be done if the teachers (many of whom have not studied history themselves to or beyond GCSE level) are offered CPD in specific subjects, including history, by experts who understand that subject and its details.

Learning about history, the events of the past as well as the tools of how to investigate and question the past, is a fundamental right of all children. Knowing about key historical events is an essential part of being a citizen in the UK; it can also help young people to understand the world they live in now, to recognise the importance of British values and to be able to recognise fake news and tackle falsehoods. However, it can only provide that knowledge and skills to children from an early age if those delivering it have a proper knowledge and understanding of the history they are teaching, including a detailed understanding of the curriculum at top level.

The Historical Association primary survey is a biennial survey that allows the HA to monitor trends in primary history education. Sometimes those trends are positive and in other cases they are concerning. Primary teachers’ understanding of the demands of the history National Curriculum, especially at a time of review and access to specialist expert CPD to support them in this, is a trend that we will be monitoring along with funding to support pupils’ access and inclusion in history. We should all want children to continue to enjoy learning about history in the years to come, not just in the surveys of the past.

The Historical Association continues to provide quality CPD for all its members and specially targeted CPD for the Primary sector.