Ofsted: Schools should focus on ‘factual information’ and teach empire ‘in balanced manner’
Schools should focus on ‘factual information’ about historical figures and teach empire ‘in balanced manner’, Ofsted chief inspector says
Schools told to focus on the facts when discussing contentious historical figuresOfsted’s Amanda Spielman said teaching of British Empire should be ‘balanced’ Tory MPs have consistently called for UK’s history to be taught in ‘nuanced’ way
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School have been warned they must focus on the facts when teaching pupils about contentious historical figures and the history of the empire.
Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, said teachers now had to tread a ‘careful path’ between being ‘damned for being intolerant’ or ‘slammed for being woke’.
Speaking at an Office for Student’s event, Ms Spielman, 61, said: ‘We want schools to encourage children to become engaged citizens without tipping over the line of impartiality’.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi has continued his war against woke in the classroom and urged teachers to cover ‘the full range of political issues they need to’.
The Cabinet minister has consistently said they should leave their political views outside of school and not impose it on their pupils.
New government guidance on political impartiality in schools was released in February, that suggested the teaching of historical figures should focus on ‘factual information’ about them, while lessons on the British empire should be presented in ‘a balanced manner’.
Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, (above) said teachers now had to tread a ‘careful path’ between being ‘damned for being intolerant’ or ‘slammed for being woke’
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi has continued his war against woke in the classroom and urged teachers to cover ‘the full range of political issues they need to’
The Government released guidance on political impartiality for schools in February, aimed at helping teachers avoid ‘promoting contested theories as fact’ in England.
Some anti-racism campaigners criticised the advice as ‘disturbing’, claiming it appeared to focus on ‘creating a debate about the ‘culture wars” rather than helping pupils learn about racism and prejudice.
It comes as Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said the issue of political impartiality in classrooms is ‘a complaint I’m hearing more and more’.
He said pupils should be able to read books containing racial slurs at school, adding it is ‘really important that children are allowed to be able to be curious… to understand where this stuff comes from, rather than (where you) create these sort of false filters for them’.
Last month, equalities minister Kemi Badenoch said when she was growing up in Nigeria the legacy of the British Empire was taught in a ‘nuanced’ way.
She urged schools to emulate this and teach about both the positive and negative aspects.
Ms Badenoch had just published the Government’s strategy on tackling racial disparities, which includes plans for a new model history curriculum.
Meanwhile, Ms Spielman said the pandemic is still ‘looming large over everything that we do’ from early years to universities, and schools and higher education institutions need to work together to give young people the ‘confidence’ to go on to further study.
‘A big part of that will always sit with schools and colleges themselves,’ she said. ‘They need to set a culture that values learning and one that sees the accumulation of qualifications as the natural by-product of a rounded education, rather than an end in itself.
‘In the wake of Covid and the learning gaps that so many young people have, it’s not good enough to cover the same ground at twice the speed – that won’t help these young people as they develop and it won’t help universities as you take on the next generation of students.’
A world map showing the British empire in 1902. Britons were more nostalgic for an empire than any other former imperial power, according to a 2020 YouGov survey
She said schools are expected ‘to handle so much more than academic education, as society evolves, and sometimes, as support services are withdrawn’.
Schools’ vital role in safeguarding had been exposed during the first lockdown when social services referrals fell dramatically as ‘children just slipped out of sight of teachers’, she said.
John Blake, director for fair access and participation at the Office for Students, condemned ‘artificial barriers’ to higher education for students from poorer backgrounds.
‘We absolutely should tear down artificial barriers to access based on accents, home lives or the hobbies you’ve the time and resources to pursue,’ he said.
‘We also have to have some honest conversations about the variable levels of preparedness of students for higher education, and how to ensure that every student, wherever they’re from and whenever in their life they apply, is in the best position to get every benefit they can from their one shot at state-subsidised undergraduate education.
‘We should all be ashamed too many young people cannot access the fundamentals of learning that are their right. And that is not just a barrier for the individual concerned – it fundamentally alters the shape of the pipeline from school to university.’
A 2020 survey found Britons were more nostalgic for an empire than any other former imperial power.
The polling, from YouGov, showed 27 percent of people in the UK would have liked Britain to still have an empire, 50 percent would not and 23 percent did not know.
It also found a third of Britons believe countries colonised by Britain were ‘better off’.
