“It remains the case that most pupils in Wales will leave school with limited knowledge of the history of their own nation and its place in the wider UK and world”
Dic Penderyn, who was hanged at Cardiff market in 1831 for his part in the Merthyr Rising
The Curriculum for Wales is probably the most important reform of devolution’s first quarter century.
It is the first significant departure from the primary and secondary school curriculum in England and offers an opportunity for radical change in what happens in our schools. It is structured around four purposes and in each of the six areas of learning and experience some key principles (called ‘what matters statements’).
Otherwise, schools are largely free to decide what they teach the 3-14 age group.
It is early days to make firm judgements about whether its worthy aspirations have yet been realised.
This is especially clear when it comes to the history of Wales.
One of the curriculum’s criteria is a requirement that pupils receive ‘consistent exposure’ to Welsh history.
However, there is no explanation of what that means in practice and schools are left to interpret what constitutes ‘consistent’.
Does it require Welsh history to be covered in every lesson or every term? Would an annual lesson on Wales be enough? Nor are schools told which Welsh history topics they should cover.
There is nothing to stop a school teaching the medieval history of Wales extensively but never venturing past Glyndwr’s uprising thus giving the impression that a distinctive Welsh past ended centuries ago.
Similarly, a school could just focus on Wales in the 20th century and thus leave its pupils with no understanding of where Welsh identity came from.
History teachers will try to avoid such situations, but they face many challenges. There is rarely any co-operation between secondary schools and their feeder primary schools over curriculum content. Thus, what history pupils learn is not necessarily connected or incremental. Topics might even be repeated.
Teachers are also limited in the time, expertise and resources they have at their disposal. This means it is easier to cover topics that a teacher is comfortable teaching, using resources they know are suitable for their learners.
In relation to the history of Wales, therefore, the Curriculum for Wales could deliver radical change but the freedom it gives schools also means it might just deliver more of the same.
Successive education ministers have reaffirmed their commitment to Welsh history but have failed to acknowledge that the very design of the Curriculum for Wales ensures there will be no consistent outcomes.
A curriculum designed to facilitate schools developing their own focus intentionally creates a postcode lottery where different schools produce different outcomes in the knowledge pupils leave with. The failure to acknowledge this owes much to the fact there is no clear evidence on how the curriculum is being implemented.
Welsh Government does not collect data about what topics are taught within schools and thus it does not know what its requirement around Welsh history is leading to in practice.
It did commission a small-scale report from Estyn.
This identified that in primary schools there was some enthusiasm for teaching local history, but in a few schools, there was no Welsh history taught at all.
In secondary schools, the picture was worse. They concluded: “In many secondary schools, lessons include only cursory references to local and Welsh history. Teachers do not plan opportunities for pupils to develop a coherent knowledge and understanding of the local area and Wales.”
The government’s aspiration for more Welsh history is also evident in the reforms being introduced at GCSE. But again, the detail and nature of implementation is undermining that aspiration.
From September 2026, all Welsh secondary schools will be required to follow GCSE courses set by the WJEC.
In History this will require an in-depth study of a Welsh history topic as one of three thematic units in the syllabus. Welsh history can also be studied as part of a fourth unit which requires a 75-100-year study of a themed event from the islands of Great Britain and/or Ireland.
On the surface, this is a positive development. But it is undermined by a requirement that school’s study one unit each on the modern, early modern and medieval periods.
Given schools’ preference for topics they already teach, and which they know pupils find interesting, most schools will probably opt for Nazi Germany or modern USA as their modern choice and Tudor Wales as their early modern choice.
This leaves Genghis Khan or the Black Death as the medieval options.
The modern and medieval Welsh courses are likely to lose out because of how the choices between units have been configured.
Thus, despite the aspirations to deliver a curriculum for Wales, it remains the case that most pupils in Wales will leave school with limited knowledge of the history of their own nation and its place in the wider UK and world.
Given that virtually all international education systems provide their learners with an entitlement to study their own history, this situation is both unfair to Welsh pupils and it also has a negative impact on their education.
Everyone in Wales should be concerned about that.
This can be addressed without a radical departure from or revision of the CfW. In the first place we believe that much greater encouragement and exemplification should be provided for primary and secondary schools to include Welsh history in the curriculum.
This should embrace social, economic and political developments in Wales as a bilingual nation and reflect recent scholarship on the history of women, minority ethnic groups and aspects of popular culture, which are likely to be of particular interest to young people.
Exemplification requires not just the creation of new resources to show how Welsh history can be taught in practice but also example curricula to show how different topics can be connected and developed.
Teachers do not always have the expertise or time to design the whole new curricula demanded by the CfW.
They should be given examples that can be used or adapted off the shelf.
Yet more encouragement, guidance and exemplification is not, however, going to deliver a radical change or a base of knowledge that all pupils in Wales are exposed to and share.
We thus believe there should be introduced into Year 8 of the Humanities curriculum a core defined element which offers pupils an overview of the key events in the history of Wales.
There should be accompanying material and activities tailored to the different regions of Wales to ensure the commitment to local history is not lost.
Most importantly, the course should go right up to the present day and include coverage of how the Senedd works, the state of Wales and Welsh society today. That would ensure the Curriculum’s aspirations to teach Welsh citizenship and political knowledge are also delivered.
These developments, including the production of suitable study resources and professional learning on Welsh history, should be led by teachers to ensure that they have professional support and reflect the needs of pupils.
One of Wales’ greatest historians, Gwyn Alf Williams, reminded us that ‘There is no historical necessity for Wales…. If we want Wales, we will have to make Wales’.
We believe that it is time to do this at a maximum point of impact – in our school curriculum through providing an entitlement to our children and young people.
- David Egan is Professor of Education at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Martin Johnes is Professor of Welsh History at Swansea University.
