The Teachers’ Union has formed a partnership with education experts to “critically question” the government’s plans for a model history curriculum in England, as its leaders warned that cultural wars continue to rage over what should be taught in the classroom.
Mary Busted, co-secretary general of the National Education Union, said she was joining the Runnymede Trust and others to monitor changes in the history curriculum that the government announced as part of its response to Sewell’s report on racial and ethnic differences.
“We want to ensure that the history, cultures and perspectives of blacks are properly recognized in all subjects and throughout the year. And that should center the perspectives of those who have been colonized or their descendants, “Bousted told delegates at the NEU’s annual conference in Bournemouth.
The Ministry of Education plans to develop a model curriculum in history to be used by schools until 2024, with the help of “experts, historians and school leaders”. Ministers tried to reassure critics that the curriculum would be diverse in a “meaningful, not symbolic” way.
Bousted said she was a “monster” of the right-wing media and suffered a “whirlwind of outrage” on social media, saying she was not interested in a curriculum composed solely of works by dead white men.
“All this shows me personally and all of us, politically, that cultural wars are raging and continue to rage, and that they engulf anyone who dares to challenge the narrow monocultural base on which the current national curriculum is based, with all its assumptions. it builds powerful knowledge, ”Busted said.
The partnership with the Runnymede Trust and other education experts will “act as a point of critical questioning” of planned government changes, Busted said.
At its annual conference, union delegates earlier adopted proposals calling for a campaign to decolonize school curricula.
The UK’s statistical authority said it was investigating the use of DfE statistics in its schools’ white paper after NEU leaders announced that the union had lodged a formal complaint.
Kevin Courtney, the other joint secretary general of the NEU, said the union had complained to the statistics watchdog “about this disgraceful, deliberate misuse of statistics and deliberate suppression of relevant data” in DfE documents to support its claim. that the transformation of local government schools into academies improved their assessments in Ofsted.
Boasted vowed to defeat the government’s goal of turning all public schools in England into academies by 2030, calling the White Paper “the latest crackdown on zombie education ideologues with zombie education policies.”
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