Experiencing the history National Curriculum 1991–2011: voices of veteran teachers

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 2018 it is 30 years since the Educational Reform Act of 1988 introduced a National Curriculum to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This article questions whether this policy became something to be celebrated, commemorated or ignored. The National Curriculum for history has proved contentious in media and academic circles, but the focus has been on documentation over lived experience. In contrast, this research used an oral history approach to explore how 13 history teachers perceived, experienced and enacted the National Curriculum in their own classrooms between 1991 and 2011. The findings show this period could be closely identified with increased prescription in the history classroom and, as a corollary, a potential loss of teacher autonomy. The National Curriculum played some part in that process but, after the initial shock, was not perceived as a restrictive force. Changing responses to the National Curriculum over four programmes of study illuminate changing experiences of history teaching from 1991 to 2011, a period fraught with developments in national educational policy.