How can we improve diversity within history education?
Christienna Fryar
“A history that cannot explain what Britain was doing in its empire has little to offer to students”
There are a few ways to think about diversity in history education. As a historian of Britain and the Caribbean, my emphasis is on race and empire. However, this argument extends to other marginalised histories, which all need a greater presence in history curricula. One definition would be a more representative curriculum that connects, in one way or another, British history to the heritages of all students, while another approach might focus on increasing the number of BAME teachers in schools and BAME historians in universities.
These are not distinct projects. The 2018 Royal Historical Society report Race, Ethnicity & Equality in UK History notes that fewer BAME students in Britain opt to study history at the next level (GCSEs, A-levels, and university) than their white counterparts, and the pattern continues when history undergraduates consider postgraduate study. This is what the organisation Leading Routes calls “the broken pipeline”. When primary and secondary-school history introduces students to stories about a past that seems relevant to their lives, those students are more likely to continue studying history at more advanced levels.
The most straightforward and effective way to do this would be through rewriting the national history curriculum. Such a rewrite should move away from exceptionalism and towards a more complex and accurate rendering of Britain’s past. Some might argue that it is
