Leading Article: History must not be forgotten

Last week's report on history teaching by Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, gives a worrying insight into the way the subject is taught in schools. It has often been forgotten that history, like modern foreign languages, suffered a slump in take-up once it stopped being a compulsory part of the national curriculum after the age of 14. But that is not the main point of the report. Even before children reach 14, it appears, they get few lessons on chronological history – of either the UK or the world.

As a result, many youngsters have a detailed knowledge of Henry VIII's six wives and know how he discarded them but understand little about how power in England has been wielded over the centuries. Similarly, they have a good knowledge of the Second World War – and Winston Churchill's role in ensuring Allied success – but know little of political developments either between the two world wars or thereafter.

Contrary to what many newspapers think, the new national curriculum for secondary schools unveiled by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority takes some steps to overcome this failing. It insists, for example, that the development of political structures in England (and the rest of the UK) should be taught in chronological order. Forget the row about whether Winston Churchill has been dropped from the national curriculum. He has not. It is still compulsory to teach about the Second World War – and the run-up to it. The Government thought that no sane history teacher would be able to teach about the Second World War without mentioning Churchill's role in it, so it would be insulting to teachers to insist he was mentioned. The Government is right.

The biggest danger to history is that it is allocated less time than it used to be on the timetable for 11 to 14-year-olds because of the move towards teaching more topic work. The Government will have to move swiftly to reassure history teachers that their subject will not suffer and that it might even be possible for them to use the introduction of more topic work to teach a sequence of topics to illustrate the chronological development of a strand in our history, for example, the changing face of migration to the UK over the centuries.