Will the Minister confirm whether the group responsible for planning the humanities curriculum originally agreed that the statement regarding what is important in the humanities should include the history of Wales and/or the story of Wales as a particular area or unit in its own right?
The development of the new curriculum has been and continues to be an iterative process, based on co-construction, collaboration and engagement.
The AoLE development groups, including the Humanities group worked as part of a network to consider a wide range of evidence and to develop the approach and detail of the curriculum guidance, including the statements of What Matters. The practitioners worked with Welsh Government, consortia, Estyn and others and were supported by a range of experts to develop the curriculum.
The statements of what matters were developed against a clear set of principles developed in collaboration with curriculum design experts. The statements of what matters are design to the articulate fundamental concepts in each Area, rather than describe individual subjects, disciplines or topic areas. These statements by their nature were required to be broad in order to:
- Span learning for all ages
- Encompass a range of experiences, knowledge, skills and disciplinary concepts
- Form the basis of learners’ progress throughout their learning journey
- Be manageable for practitioners and learners as a suite across curriculum areas.
The new curriculum will contain mandatory elements including the statements of What Matters for each Area of Learning and Experience. Within Humanities, these statements include:
- 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
Every school’s curriculum will be required to include this learning. As such, the history of Wales will be mandatory.
These will be non-negotiable elements of every school’s curriculum, for every learner at every stage. It will simply not be possible to ignore the central and critical role of all histories – our local and national history– in a school’s curriculum. A school or setting’s curriculum must therefore encompass this. If it does not, the school or setting will not be fulfilling its duties.