ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on oral history interviews with 13 veteran history teachers. It focuses on the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1991, teachers' experiences of this policy in the classroom, teachers' enactment of this policy and teachers' changing attitudes towards the policy. Further programmes of study for the History National Curriculum in 1995, 2000 and 2008 are also explored. Examples of teacher autonomy and teacher mediation of policy in this period are highlighted. A complex picture emerges of where prescription came from and how history teachers experienced and responded to the prescription. Some teachers disliked restrictions of content in the Programme of Study; some had their own pre-existing professional agenda to realise and feared the National Curriculum would impede those personal goals; a small minority minimised the impact of the National Curriculum and focused only on the changes in assessment. For each of these groups the process of accommodation was different. This chapter considers the impact of the National Curriculum on history teachers through a consideration first of content, then historical approach and finally assessment.
