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Hot History TopicsThis section of the site aims to keep you up-dated with latest initiatives. These will appear in the form of short up-dates along with more detailed downloadable articles. In due course these may be fed into the main body of the site accessed by the drop-down menu.
OFSTED’s NEW training resource for primary history subject leadersOFSTED has just produced a training resource for teachers of history in primary schools. Sounds great? Well actually it is a series of 30 PowerPoint slides mostly with rather lame questions that simply turn the prose findings of their report History for All into questions. You can imagine the sort of thing. It goes like this (slide 6). A key feature of good practice is where teachers have a well-articulated vision for history. Can you guess the question they ask? Yes, you guessed. Do you have a well-articulated vision for history in your school?!! Rather than offering some helpful hints about how this might look, instead we move to the next curious question: "Do your pupils know when they are studying history and why the subject is important?" I have no issues with the second part of the question but feel rather angry at the first. Apparently this question arises from an inspection in which pupil s said they were not studying history, but topic. I personally can’t see why this is such a venal sin. But OFSTED has clearly indicated its feeling towards integrated topic work and you should know this. Slide 7 repeats their view in History For All. “History in a thematic approach did not of itself undermine the integrity of the subject. Integrated work succeeded where the development of knowledge and thinking of each subject was emphasized. … However we also found that pupils’ progress tended to be slower in schools visited that did not teach history as a discrete subject than in those that did." Slide 8 helpfully focuses on progression, whereas slides 9 to 12 ask whether pupils’ understanding and content coverage at Key Stage 2 is too episodic. There are some observations about building a sense of chronology, the comment about duration and interval being much more helpful than the one about timelines. Slides 13-16 simply list the features of effective history teaching but it is useful to print this off for all staff and the points made are helpful. Regarding learning, slide 18 merely reproduced passages from the History For All report for consideration, though slide 21 is more helpful in listing 5 features of successful learning. The final section on CPD moves between the unrealistic and the self-evident and offers little practical solution. A summary and conclusion are promised on slide 28 but all that is offered is a task and references to OFSTED’s other publications. If OFSTED’s aim was to make some parts of the History of All report better known, then it has probably succeeded. If it was to offer helpful and practical advice that hard-pressed history subject leaders are keen to implement than OFSTED will probably be disappointed in the teachers’ responses. I was certainly left feeling very let down. A full copy of the resource and the report can be found here. A case study of outstanding primary practice in Fox Primary School, LondonOFSTED has just produced a case study of outstanding primary practice in Fox Primary School, London. It is available from the OFSTED site here. The report, Developing outstanding historical thinking in primary schools, makes a number of helpful points, mostly predictable but nonetheless important. If I had to pick my top 5 they would be: 1. The fact that pupils were very active leaners OFSTED’s training resource for secondary history teachersOFSTED has offered this short 30-slide PowerPoint as a training resource for secondary history teachers. My initial reaction was positive. Has OFSTED now come to realize that it needs to help teachers to improve by showing them how, not just exhorting them? I opened the slick PowerPoint with a genuine sense of expectation. By slide 10 I felt completely cheated. The first 9 slides - remember this is training! - were devoted to a quiz about numbers studying the subject. There followed a series of leading questions which I soon discovered were identical to the ones posed of primary colleagues. How on earth can this be? When it came to curriculum I thought we might be treated to some real insights. All there was, was the same old drum banging on about lack of British, as opposed to English, history. The sections on teaching and learning merely reproduced extracts from the History For All report of March 2011 to consider. This is not training! And, you guessed it, it was the same as KS1 and 2. Bizarre. Right to the end your hopes are continually being dashed. Even the summary and conclusion was nothing of the sort, merely another lame question and some self-referencing web links. So if you have already read History For All and have a spare 30 minutes to devote to your CPD needs, don’t start here. If you haven’t it does at least focus your mind on the ‘highlights’. Could do better.
How well are you providing for your Gifted and Talented pupils in history? Let’s hear what they say.This is a just a simple checklist from the G&T students’ perspective. How well do you: 1. Offer strong mutual student-teacher relationships in which you talk about the nature of history not just the tasks in hand? 2. Offer opportunities for working with similarly gifted, talented and motivated students? 3. Optimise use of lesson time by making sure students aren’t asked to do what they already know and can do. This is called curriculum compaction. Some research suggests that 40% of lesson time for G&T pupils is wasted going over ‘old ground’? 4. Let students work things out for themselves? 5. Let students ‘fly’ with ideas rather than holding them back longer than necessary? 6. Offer access to a wide range of up-to-date resources with the opportunity to use these at home? 7. Give guidance on how to network with other students and organisations who might be able to help them extend their study, talent and interests? 8. Encourage them to carry out research on their own on topics of their choice? 9. Avoid over-using G&T students as mentors for other pupils, although most like the opportunity to ‘teach’ another pupil from time to time? Imaginative Key Stage 3 history planningLast week OFSTED published its second good practice history cameo featuring outstanding curriculum planning . It featured the work of the history department at Copleston High in Suffolk. You can access the full article here. The highlight for me, in addition to the interesting examples of diversity and local history, was the way the curriculum was structured. This paragraph from the report encapsulates it well. “In each of the three years, a key overarching question links all the topics studied in that year. In Year 7, the enquiry is focused on ‘How and why has Ipswich changed since Saxon times?’ In Year 8, the key question is ‘Did Britons win their rights through violence or reasoning?’ In Year 9, the enquiry looks at ‘How should we remember the 20th century?’ In these ways, each year focuses on a particular theme, and moves from local history in Year 7 to national history in Year 8 and international history in Year 9”. The other significant feature was the way the department focuses relentlessly on ‘real outcomes’ that mattered to students. At the end of Year 7 students undertake work on ‘Marketing historic Ipswich’, whereas in Year 9 they work in groups to produce a documentary film on an important issue of the 20th century in order to exemplify what the century meant to them. Well worth a quick read if you want to make your KS3 curriculum more sharply focused on what matters to the students you teach. Inspiring stuff. Using HINGE questions to diagnose depth of learningPerhaps I am alone in sighing deeply every time I hear the names WALT and WILF. Don’t get me wrong: I think AfL is a crucial aspect of teaching and learning. I just think that its deepest principles have been hi-jacked by attempts to make it seem fun. To me the most interesting part is not the sharing of criteria but the posing of diagnostic questions. What questions do I need to pose to identify what has been learned well, and what needs to be learned better? And what slightly different teaching approaches do I need to employ to eradicate misapprehensions. I guess I am more interested in how we help the students to improve. If we know what they find most difficult we can sort out the remedies because we have probably already anticipated them when we were considering the questions. Let’s look at a couple of examples. In one Y10 class all students could give me 4 strong reasons for the outbreak of World War One. They knew the MAIN acronym and could confidently play it back to me. But was this was merely shallow learning. How deep was their genuine understanding. I next posed the question so if we had all these big causes why didn’t war break out earlier. A sea of puzzled expressions. As we tackled that question you could almost see the learning going deeper. The same could be done with Year 8 pupils studying the English Civil War. If Charles I had given parliament virtually all of what they asked for in the summer of 1641, why then did a Civil War break out just a year later? These are HINGE questions. They diagnose deeper understanding. I have one for every lesson. I float them towards the second half of the lesson but not at the end so that there is time to adjust my teaching in the light of their response. In almost all aspects of assessment we need to give time for students to improve before we move on. Too much assessment work comes right at the end of units. By the time they are given useful feedback they have moved onto a new topic. This makes it really hard to set meaningful targets. If you have just done a major piece of work focusing on interpretations and causation, it is highly unlikely that pupils will be able put their targets into practice if the next unit majors on change and continuity which it legitimately could. E Baccalaureate and history: Gift horse or Trojan horseAs a history teacher you might well ask what there is not to like about the EBacc. After all, it means more students studying history at GCSE. Apparently the move should widen access to history in the spirit of OFSTED’s recent report entitled History For All. It should mean headteachers providing a stronger foundation at Key Stage 3 if success is to be achieved in GCSE. With Gove’s ruling on a 'two-year GCSE with a terminal examination', we should see more 3-year, as opposed to 2-year, Key Stage 3 history curricula, as was always intended. So far so good. More history lessons, more teaching time, more history teachers? Well, not necessarily. Whilst the TES has reported a dwindling in adverts for new jobs in Music, and Technology, are we absolutely sure that some non-specialist teachers will not be redeployed to teach KS3 history, without much re-training. OFSTED’s recent report History for All claimed that one of the important reasons why history teaching was strong was the fact that the teachers were so well-qualified. How long with this remain? Another key concern is already happening. Students are actually jumping horses during courses, giving up their chosen subject to take on one on the EBacc list. Not only does this smack of putting the school's interests before the students', it also makes you wonder what sort of experience some of these later-arriving students will have. I’ve already seen schools where history GCSE is being taught in twilight catch-up classes. I really don’t understand why headteachers surrender control over the curriculum in this way. After all, E-bacc is only one performance measure and one that has little relevance for one in three students. But of course the greatest reservation is reserved for the fraudulent claim that the EBacc will open an opportunity to study history for all; that it is all about improving choice and access. If that was its real intention, why is the focus on A*-C only. During a week in which Gove has downgraded multiple GCSE ‘soft-subject’ vocational qualifications, is it assumed that headteachers will now steer them to history? I don’t think so. Why are these students more likely to get a ‘good GCSE pass’ (how I hate that phrase) in history now, when they haven’t necessarily chosen it, than they were before when they chose it from a long list of options. It simply doesn’t make sense. Headteachers will want a high proportion of students to study history, but only those likely to achieve an A*-C grade . Anything below that will not appear in the EBacc League tables. A further unintended consequence of the EBacc might be taking the lid off the Pandora’s box of subject residuals. It won’t be long before headteachers are thumping the table demanding to know why all subject residuals aren’t equal. Students studying art and drama, with a strong positive residual, may now find themselves encouraged into history where the residual has been stubbornly negative for 15 years. So, is this a sincere attempt by Gove to get more students to study history? If it was why, not go the whole hog and make it compulsory for all. Or, at the very least recognize achievement in the grades below C, as being really worthwhile. Then we can really talk about History For All. Regrettably, one is left wondering whether the motives for this are political not educational. At the time of the next election Gove will look back at how the E-Bcc results have improved on his watch and use that as a by-word for achievement. It's so cynical, so hypocritical and possibly more damaging to history’s cause than we first predicted. What makes a history department outstanding?In the little-known, and rarely visited, backwater of OFSTED’s website, lurks a section on good practice. In my opinion what is written there rarely inspires. At present there is just one case study of outstanding leadership and management, but what a gem it is. The department described is an 11-19 comprehensive school serving Hounslow. Approximately 80% of the students are from minority ethnic groups. The proportion whose first language is not English is well above that found nationally. The proportion of students eligible for free school meals is high. The proportion of students with learning difficulties and/or disabilities is in line with the national average although the proportion with statements of special educational need is significantly above national levels. There are 40 feeder primary schools. So, this is not an easy-win success story from a school in the prosperous leafy ‘white’ highlands of Hertfordshire. This is what makes it such compelling reading. You can read the full cameo for yourself on the Ofsted website What I have done is simply to summarise and underscore the key points that OFSTED is making in the article available as the downloadable file opposite. OFSTED’s report on secondary history 2007-2010OFSTED’s report on the state of history in English schools was published last week. It is based on evidence from inspections of history between April 2007 and March 2010 in 83 primary schools and 83 secondary schools. The findings are a touch anodyne for my liking. Many observations merely reinforce what was reported on three years ago. With a new HMI leading history, Mike Maddison, I was hoping for a few more penetrating insights. There are some welcome sideswipes at weak curriculum provision in Years 7 and 8 and some useful comparative data about history’s popularity. There are also some cameos of best practice which some of you might find helpful at KS 3 and 4 as well as some criticisms of the usual suspects: assessment and interpretations. History was generally found to be well-taught and well led. Most pupils enjoyed well-planned lessons that extended their knowledge, challenged their thinking and enhanced their understanding. Sounds like a winning formula to me! So why are Senior Leadership Teams so keen to trim history’s sails? Below are my edited highlights of OFSTED’s report, the full version of which is on their site. I do not attempt a balanced synopsis of the report: rather, I simply identify areas where I know schools welcome knowing OFSTED’s view. We start with the areas of strength or improvement and the cameos of best practice before listing the criticisms of the practice seen. Click here
OFSTED reports on primary history March 2011Between April 2007 and March 2010 OFSTED visited 83 primary schools to discover the health of primary history. What they found represents good news. History was generally taught well and the subject was well led. Most pupils enjoyed well-planned lessons that extended their knowledge, challenged their thinking and enhanced their understanding. Whilst the findings were generally unremarkable, they do help in three main respects. Firstly, they give us a view of what OFSTED regard as best practice. Secondly they remind us of the weaknesses in primary history that are still being identified despite frequent mentions in earlier reports. The third benefit is that we get a glimpse of OFSTED’s view of thematic work which increasingly is how history is being taught. Click here for edited highlights. Primary curriculum ditchedOne of the hottest topics over the last year has been the complete rewriting of the Primary curriculum. I had strong reservations about the incoherent nature of KS2 history, but on the whole felt it would lead to improvements. I encouraged schools to start planning so they hit the ground running in 2011. But now all that has changed. Many of you who were out of the country just after Easter will possibly have missed the news of the House of Common's rejection of the Children's Bill on 7 April. Without going into the politics of this, (for which see my blog!), you will be devastated to learn that all the planning you have been doing might have to be reconsidered. I had always taken a moderate approach to revising the planning as you can see from the new introductions. I am glad, for your sake, that I did. You can still access the old curriculum materials as well as the new ideas. In my view many of the improvements to curriculum design introduced ahead of the new curriculum in 2011will happen any way - because they made perfect sense. As far as the site is concerned I am keeping the old planning guidance but am also showing what your approach might look like from 2011 if the new curriculum sees the light of day. The stalling by the Tories and Labour's determination to push much of the Bill through before the end of this parliament's life may explain why the changes to the primary curriculum are not in THIS bill. But who knows what will happen after the 6th May election. The news of the death of the new primary curriculum has been grossly exaggerated! APP revisited: The 12 important points you need to know, and 8 concerns to consider.As we approach the introduction of APP in history, I thought I might offer a few further thoughts on this topical issue that I raised a few months ago. Readers of Teaching History 137 (December 2009) will have read Jerome Freeman and Jo Philpott’s article which covers many of the important issues and raises a few questions. It also ‘leaks’ examples of the new APP framework for history with its 3 Assessment Foci. Read on or download the PDF version. What are the main messages? 1. APP should make teachers less reliant on the use of specific assessment tasks and tests. 2. Teachers should draw on a wider range of evidence, including oral work, direct observation of pupils at work and self-assessment. There is also talk of using information from other curriculum areas. 3. The timing of the judgement is crucial. Jerome states that APP guidelines can be applied to make a periodic assessment “when the teacher has enough evidence about what a pupil is able to do independently and in different contexts”. These twin issues of degree of independence and ability to apply are pivotal here and need careful consideration. How many different contexts for example? How much independent work, compared with other work. Elsewhere, Jerome refers to consistency. This presupposes that pupils will have lots of opportunities to apply these skills. 4. The idea of sub-levelling abhorred by many of us has certainly not disappeared. Instead, Jerome writes, “Where appropriate the NC level can be refined into ‘low’, ‘secure’ and ‘high’ within the level”. 5. It is suggested by Jerome that the periodic judgement about levels should be made about twice a year. What happens if your SLT wants it more frequently than that? 6. There is an assumption that there will be “regular collaborative assessment and discussion”. As always, this will be time consuming. When combined with a portfolio that genuinely tackles the issues, this will require considerable department time, especially in the early stages. Will SLT give any non-contact time for this? I think we all know the answer. 7. Most departments will probably start by moderating just a very small sample but will this cover all teachers, all abilities? 8. There are three main assessment foci. But are they to be treated equally? There is far more in AF1 than in AF2, and AF3 is more equivalent to the key processes. Should this pervade all work? 9. The Assessment Focus criteria are not intended to be ‘dumbed down’ into a checklist of pupil speak’ can-do statement, but should instead be used as a professional teaching aid, writes Jo Phillpot. 10. The criteria are designed by teachers with the intention that they are used by teachers in their planning and reflection of pupil learning. They are not designed to replace existing models of progression developed by teachers, writes Jo. 11. You will want to take this opportunity to make the ‘learning journey’ explicit to the pupils, explaining how the current work fits into their broader historical understanding. 12. Given the emphasis on variety of outcomes, you may want to spend longer thinking about what products are fit for purpose. Jo writes that she “now places greater importance on the nature of pupil outcomes and how I am asking pupils to demonstrate their learning”. Questions and concerns 1. How long will it be before SLT are asking you to create sub-levels based on the 3 Assessment Foci? 2. To what extent will some teachers draw the targets they set for pupils from the crude AF criteria rather than more helpful models of progression they may have developed? 3. Will evidence from other curriculum areas really be worth the effort of collecting it? 4. How effective will internal moderation be? This is not 2 pieces of coursework for 40% of the cohort, but twice-yearly for all KS3 pupils in Y7, 8 and 9 (in a dwindling number of schools!). . How different will the outcomes actually be when it comes to moderation? Will we not simply carry on focusing on marking particular pieces of written work more carefully to criteria and then counter-balance that judgement with our more subjective view of pupil progress based on a wider range of evidence? 6. Who will monitor the balance of work for AF1, 2 and 3? 7. What work will need to be retained? Will a small sample be sufficient? 8. Will SLT support subjects by giving additional protected time for departmental discussion in the early stages at least? There are many more issues to raise here, but let’s keep it positive!! The top 8 issues OFSTED is looking for in its subject surveys of history 2009-10As you all know, OFSTED is carrying out a series of subject-based inspections this year. I have read the individual reports and feel that there are a few issues worth sharing with you. In addition to the usual areas to do with achievement, teaching and learning and leadership, OFSTED has two aspects it is focusing on during 2009-10: community cohesion and the development of independent learning. Here are the top 8 issues that seem to feature in each report. 1. Community cohesion “In order for students to deepen and broaden their knowledge, skills and understanding the Key Stage 3 History programme of study addresses the diverse experiences and ideas, beliefs and attitudes of men, women and children in past societies and how these have shaped the world. Through the concept of diversity the students explore cultural, ethnic and religious diversity and racial equality. Diversity exists within and between groups due to cultural, ethnic, regional, linguistic, social, economic, technological, political and religious differences. Cultural understanding is developed in history through the range of groups and individuals investigated, for example minorities and majorities, European and non-European. People and societies involved in the same historical event may have different experiences and views and may develop a variety of stories, versions, opinions and interpretations of that event." 2. Development of independent learning 3. Another key area for us all to be thinking about is the perennial one of differentiation, now in its new clothes seen as personalisation. Central to the Every Child Matters Agenda, you will find frequent reference to whether ALL pupils progress at the optimum rate, not just the majority. Here is an example of the types of comment OFSTED are making “ In some lessons students are required to work at the same pace regardless of their ability”. Personally I think this is a rather weak comment for them to be making but it is worth making a mental note of how consistently you differentiate in terms of objectives as well as activity. 4. Inspectors are very critical of the use of targets at Key Stage 3 in particular. This is seen in terms of sharing with pupils the precise steps of progression within the main skills and concepts and how they relate to the requirements of the new curriculum. So you would be well advised to visit the progression section of the site to give you the detail you need. A typical example reads “Tracking of student progress lacks sufficient rigour for the history teachers to identify how well students make progress in specific skills over time.” 5. The focus on pupil enjoyment is now stronger than ever. Hardly a paragraph passes without reference to pupils’ views on the issue e.g. choice of exam board specification at GCSE, AS and A2, “Students speak highly of the KS3 module entitled How United is the UK? and see this as a key topic in the development of their awareness of citizenship.” 6. Cross-curricular approach. For the first year OFSTED are making specific comments on this. They seem to be praising it when they see it and giving departments the benefit of the doubt if they are moving in the right direction without necessarily achieving a great deal. One thing to watch out for. They are picking history departments up for not monitoring the impact of cross-curricular innovations, so worth thinking about how you would do it. “Links with other subjects are growing but not evaluated” 7. Learning outside the classroom Once again the theme here is not only what you are offering but also what pupils’ think about what is being offered. 8. Cultural and ethnic diversity including within the UK. An interesting example of this showed how history students in a predominantly white school visited a school in Oldham to appreciate what it would be like learning alongside students of different faiths and cultures.
The new primary curriculum guidance has landed; 10 questions to ask yourself about the implications for your role as subject leader.The document introducing you to the new primary curriculum has now been published. It can be found here. As with so much of this literature it is full of high-flown rhetoric but short on practical examples. We are promised these over the year in advance of implementation in September 2011. I will keep you fully informed as exemplification emerges. In terms of history’s place in the new primary curriculum, you can change as much or as little as you like. Getting your history curriculum in good shape In advance of implementation you might like to ask yourself some important questions which will give you an insight into your own readiness to teach the new curriculum from September 2011. Go to Hot Topics for some suggestions. You will see that 5 of the ten questions have been answered briefly here. For the fuller answers and for the definitive answers to the other five unanswered questions you will need to subscribe to the site. In the curriculum section you will find detailed answers to all these questions, with separate advice for Key Stage 1 and for Key Stage 2, as some of the issues are different. 10 questions to ask yourself Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 For access to expert answers for the other five questions, you will need to subscribe.
Controlled Assessments in GCSE historyEdexcel has just published the results of its survey into the popularity of its GCSE History Controlled Assessments. Vietnam is by far the most popular topic with just under 25% of the entry. Crime and policing, Germany 1918-39 and the Impact of War on Britain are also very popular choices. You may know that they are producing booklets for all of their Controlled Assessments. Even if you are not an Edexcel centre it might be worth having a look at the questions and sources they use for topics that are most similar to what you have chosen for your own CA. Results of HA Survey of secondary teachersMany of you will have read the reporting of the latest HA survey. I’ll briefly describe the main headlines and you can then read the full report as a downloadable resource. Why bother? Well, there is some interesting data about time allocations, effects of premature decisions about 2 year curriculum on GCSE etc. Because the survey covered nearly 1 in 5 comprehensive schools in the country, you have data for over 450 schools to provide you with ammunition. It is only 16 pages long and you can quickly go to the gaps of the data to gain the evidence you need. Summary of key concerns about history teaching at Key Stage 3 (11-14) 1. The changing format in which history is taught: In a number of schools history is disappearing as a discrete subject within the curriculum. This is particularly true in the first year of secondary school (Year 7). 2. Children giving up history after only two years of secondary school. 3. Reduced time allocations even where history continues to be taught: Even where history continues to be taught up to the age of 14, the time allocated to its study is limited in many schools, particularly the academies and state comprehensive schools. These are also the types of schools most likely to report a recent reduction in the time allocated to history 4. The impact of limited time allocation on students’ later decisions about GCSE history: Those schools that allocate more than an hour a week to history for 13-14 year olds, or which are increasing the time they allocate to history, are significantly more likely to see an increase rather than a decrease in GCSE uptake. 5. Other restrictions on GCSE history uptake: Vocational diplomas and other courses offered by the Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) were not merely promoted as being of more ‘value’ (both to the students and the schools); they had become the only ‘pathway’ open to certain students.
The new OFSTED framework for 2009The OFSTED new framework for 2009 inspections has just been published and is available on-line here . You will want to study the criteria closely, but by way of a 'heads-up' you should be aware of the three main changes that will affect history departments: 1 The greater emphasis placed on evaluating the outcomes for different groups of pupils/students 2 The focus on the use of assessment to support learning 3 The closer attention paid to the leadership and management of teaching and learning. There is also a little more weight attached to looking at subjects’ contribution to community cohesion. Some of the recent reports I have looked at have certainly drawn the school’s attention to this aspect.
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