Has history got a future?

At a recent conference organised by Prince Charles, prominent historians accused schools of doing little more than teaching 'Hitler and the Henrys' and dubbed A-level history teaching 'a farce'. Caroline Haydon examines a subject in crisis

It isn't, of course, the end of history. But a battle that has broken out over how the subject is taught in schools has highlighted some very serious concerns about how it is faring. History might be up there with gardening and DIY as weighty tomes about the past are snapped up in bookstores and television dons top the ratings – around four million viewers tune in to each episode of Simon Schama's History of Britain for the BBC.

And demand for university places might be rising fast – up 11 per cent in five years. But behind the commercial success story that is modern TV and book publishing, and the numbers flocking to university, lie more worrying trends .

A recent conference at Dartington Hall hosted by Prince Charles and boasting an extraordinary line-up of writers, academics and television dons, accused schools of doing little more than teaching "Hitler and the Henrys". Simon Schama raised hackles throughout the entire history teaching profession by declaring history teaching at A-level "a farce". And though the criticism was followed by a statement that teachers were not to blame because they were working "against insurmountable odds", some angry specialists felt that some of the publicly thrown mud had stuck.

So what is going on? One thing on which all sides can agree is that it is good, ruffled feathers aside, for there to be some high-profile public debate about history.

Too few, teachers say, realise that Britain is now the only country in Europe where history is not compulsory after 14. The TV presenter, former Cambridge student and lecturer Tristram Hunt is one of many saying this is not acceptable. "Clearly history should be taught to the age of 16. This is the myth of the history boom – the vast majority who give up the subject have no conceptual understanding or identity with the past at all".

And while more are studying the subject at university, candidates at A-level have been falling – by around 15 per cent in the last 10 years. A-level reform might mean numbers are now stabilising, but it's too early in the life of the new system to detect a trend.

Certainly the Historical Association, the subject teaching body, which held its annual conference at around the same time as Dartington, to rather less public fanfare, has highlighted what it calls the increasing marginalisation of history and other humanities.

A jam-packed national curriculum has whittled down the amount of time teachers can spend on history at the same time as prescribing more for them to teach. "Many teachers have less than an hour a week to cover British history from 1066 to 1900 by the end of Year Eight – in just two years", says teacher trainer and textbook author Ian Dawson. "This leads to either shallow coverage of everything, which makes it difficult to engage pupils' enthusiasm, or coverage of some topics in depth and others in overview which means some events have to be covered cursorily."

Linda Colley , a historian and writer, is adamant that schools have to make more space for history. "It's not just an optional extra," she says. "In its own way it is as crucial as English or maths, and there are not just scholarly but political and commonsense reasons why that should be so. A better grasp of a national past is essential if we want to start pupils thinking intelligently about the rest of the world".

The Historical Association has warned that a new citizenship curriculum alone will not allow less able pupils, in particular, to understand or value – let alone take part in – responsible political discussion. They argue a need for a strong underpinning of history.

Niall Ferguson, Professor of political and financial history at Oxford and the presenter of a new series on the British Empire starting on Channel 4 in January, was at the Dartington conference. He says he sees no decline in the intellectual or the methodological capability of the pupils reaching him – both he says are impressively constant. But he echoes a common complaint from academics that "they haven't really got the broad picture" compared with students of 20 years ago – they don't see where their knowledge fits in with "the broad sweep".

"I am not in the slightest bit criticising teachers for this", he says. "I am criticising the constraints they are placed under". To help put the situation back on track he says he would prefer that school pupils knew "a little about a lot" than "a lot about a little" – an argument against the so- called "borehole" method where students plunge in to in- depth study of modules.

This lack of a "broad picture" popularised as an over-concentration on "Hitler and the Henrys" is, as you might expect, controversial. Ian Dawson believes that the curriculum has grown up in too ad hoc a fashion. Before the advent of the national curriculum, he says, many students repeated 20th-century history – and possibly the ubiquitous Nazis – at GCSE and A-level. Now they may take this period three times – in Year Nine (when it has to be done because that is the last compulsory year of history and it cannot be left out) and at GCSE and A-level.

"There is a major need for a review of history at ages 11 to 19", he says. "To date any reviews have just dealt with the age ranges separately".

Many also think that the exam boards commercial need to focus on topics which gain large entry numbers, plus publishers' keenness to tie in books and resources to popular subjects skews the market. Richard Harris, a teacher and Historical Association council member, cites the case of a teacher who wanted to teach about 15th- century France at A-level. "But she had to ask – where were the resources?" he says. "A teacher needs to be able to offer good resources such as those on offer for the popular topics. And they are not available. It's time consuming to invent your own when there's already a heavy workload and it's an additional constraining factor."

The recent reform of A-levels is, political fiascos aside, also coming under increasing criticism from history teachers . At Royal Holloway in London, the history admissions tutor Jonathan Phillips says that teachers warned the college some time ago that they thought students leaving school would have less "breadth" of knowledge. "We acted on that and we instituted a first year with wide ranging themes and a broad chronological spread to put what they had done into context", he says. "Then they can go on to make choices later on based on better knowledge."

At the independent James Allen's Girls School in London deputy head and history teacher Vikki Askew says that not all history teachers unite in criticism of the AS and A2 level, with some teaching more mixed ability groups being more positive about the reforms.

But she thinks history – and English – have suffered more than some subjects from the changes because they are about developing wider perspectives and skills, and need more reading. "If pupils are choosing four or five subjects at AS level they may not have the motivation of the old A-level student studying three subjects", she says. "They may not do the same amount of reading". That, plus the fact that exam assessment comes after one year rather than two, means students don't have the same amount of time to acquire maturity and perspective .

And despite the theory behind the reforms – that pupils would catch up in the second year – she feels that a trend towards "playing safe" on the part of teachers and pupils may have accelerated the concentration on narrower themes.

A pupil taking modules offered by the exam board Edexcel, she points out, can take the same subject for up to four out of the six modules. Edexcel says it does allow this, but that it is not something they recommend, and that the choice is up to the school not the board. "If a pupil does study four units of German history they don't overlap – they are different periods", said a spokesperson.

But Vikki Askew firmly believes that these are obstacles placed in the way of teaching that is at its best exciting, stimulating and creative. "Harking back to a golden era when the subject was better taught is rubbish", she says. "For the majority, then, history was often a lot of unconnected dates and facts. That's not happening now".

The TV dons are no less evangelistic. "It made sense for us to contribute at Dartington because we are as interested in getting outside of a university and communicating history as teachers are", says Niall Ferguson. "Four million viewers for a programme must mean we are doing something right".

For him the way forward is to examine the way history is taught across the board – in schools, universities (where he accuses academics of often contributing to the problem by abdicating from the business of influencing school syllabuses) and in the media.

Back at James Allen's Girls' School Vikki Askew would like Simon Schama to see for himself what goes on in a history lesson. She has invited him to come along – he hasn't replied just yet.

education@independent.co.uk