What is the evidence base for the Minister’s statement that the history of Wales should not be statutory on the face of the Curriculum and Assessment Bill?
The history of Wales is mandatory within the What Matters statements, for good reason and based on evidence provided within Successful Futures.
The proposed Curriculum for Wales framework is not prescriptive and tries to ensure that topics such as Welsh history are embedded across the curriculum. We are enabling schools and settings to develop an approach appropriate for their learners and communities.
Notwithstanding this, there are issues, which we consider to be particularly important and they are mandatory within the What Matters statements. There are a range of these reflecting and ensuring the thread of consistency across schools and learners but we are providing flexibility for schools about how they link these together and deliver them.
Within humanities, the statutory statements of What Matters require every school’s curriculum to include:
- A consistent exposure to the story of learners’ locality and the story of Wales
- A critical understanding of how societies are and have been organised, structured and led, in the learners’ own locality and in Wales
- Engage[ment] with the past, contemporary and anticipated challenges and opportunities facing them, their communities and Wales,
- Cultivat[ing] in learners a sense of place and sense of belonging, as embodied in the Welsh word cynefin
- An appreciation of identity, heritage and cynefin.There are four areas mentioned on the face of the Bill for specific reasons. This does not undermine the status of mandatory elements of the curriculum but seeks to guard against too much prescription.
I have always made it clear that by adding to the four areas would undermine the philosophy of the new curriculum – the What Matters code will ensure all critically important learning, including key concepts in history are mandatory through the What Matters code.