1. An indication of the strength of opposition can be seen in Historical Association, You Spoke We Listened: HA Response to the Draft National Curriculum Proposals (London: Historical Association, 2013). Ninety-six per cent of respondents criticised the proposals, condemning not only the amount of prescribed content and the way in which it had been divided between the primary and secondary phases, but also its narrow, Anglo-centric bias and overwhelming focus on political history.
2. In the final version of the Key Stage 3 curriculum, the long lists of prescribed content were replaced by shorter lists of optional aspects that might be included within seven prescribed areas. One of these explicitly required study of ‘a significant society or issue in world history and its interconnections within other world developments’. DfE, National Curriculum in England: History Programmes of Study (London: DfE, 2013).
3. M. Barber and M. Mourhsed, How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top (London: McKinsey and Company, 2007).
4. D. Cannadine, J. Keating and N. Sheldon, The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth-Century England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 233.
5. Ofsted, History in the Balance (London: Ofsted, 2007);