Main description

The aims of history education are inevitably contested and particularly so in the context of the United Kingdom where at least four nations are contained within one state structure. This article reviews the project of the English National Curriculum, introduced in 1988-1991, and revised and reissued since on four further occasions, and it traces change and continuity in the contents and disciplinary framing of the curriculum over time. Contrasts between these changes and the understandings of history espoused by historians and by politicians are considered, as are the varying ways in which political agendas have shaped and reshaped the curriculum.