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include both published and local resources related to ethnic and cultural diversity. The
lecturer was in the process of creating the bibliography for the QCA and it was intended that it
would be able to expand this to meet future needs. The interviewee said that the QCA were in
the process of reviewing Key Stage 3, GCSE and A level and that, certainly at A level, this
would lead to a much greater emphasis on diversity and inclusion within its aims. This
principle was already evident in the development of specifications for a pilot GCSE, which
was intended to bridge the academic and vocational divide. The core units for the pilot GCSE
included medieval history and either local and or international study. The course also included
a number of optional units related to themes such as migration and presenting the past. The
interviewee stressed the importance of teaching for diversity within this course:
We wanted ways of holding the different components of the pilot together so that the
whole experience made sense to the young person taking it. And if you look at that,
the key strands that hold it together are citizenship, interpretation and diversity and
inclusion and they run through. They are the strands that every unit has to address …
For example, in the medieval unit, which is one of the compulsory units, one of the
themes is diversity within the medieval periods. If you ignore that you are going to do
a disservice to the candidates so they are going to struggle to get through the exam.
How did the interviewee’s perception of an Irish dimension in the curriculum relate to their ideas about the
diversity within the history curriculum as a whole? The interviewee felt that an Irish dimension had a
significant part to play as a dimension within the National Curriculum:
We recognise it (an Irish dimension) as important, as a key part of understanding
British history and where we have got to today particularly [giving consideration to
developments from the] 17 th , 19 th and 20 th centuries … We haven’t gone as far as
specifying specific events in the National Curriculum; we have moved away from that
but, nevertheless, within that structure it would be possible to cover these.
What this meant in the history classroom depended on the expertise, attitudes of teachers and
the resources available to them. The interviewee felt that this was more likely to be an issue in
primary schools:
[In primary schools] it’s quite possible to do topics that cover and address the Irish
dimension, and I think it would be desirable. But I think, again, if they are nonspecialists,
unless they get advice in addition to the National Curriculum, they are not
necessarily going to make these links, maybe not even necessarily see that they should