National Curriculum For History (No. 2)

EDM number 1147 in 1994-95, proposed by Austin Mitchell on 18/05/1995.

That this House calls upon the Secretary of State for Education to implement the recommendations enshrining choice and professional judgement in C. J. M. McGovern's Minority Report on National Curriculum History by allowing 50 per cent. of the syllabus to be determined by schools; notes that this would remove the distinction between the prescribed status of much social history such as 'everyday life', 'health and disease', and the purely optional even non-existent status of the most distinctive landmarks and personalities of United Kingdom and European history such as the Roman Empire, the Hundred Years War, Marlborough, Clive and Wolfe, the events of the American and French Revolutions and Napoleonic Wars, the development of United Kingdom democracy since 1900, the Act of Union with Ireland, Northern Ireland, Lloyd George, the Labour Party and Winston Churchill; further notes this would remove the statutory requirement to teach history according to imposed perspectives such as ethnic, gender, cultural, social and aesthetic; and deplores the fact that the new syllabus was published and sent out to schools before Parliament was consulted.

This motion has been signed by a total of 12 MPs.