Dr Clare McAuley is a lecturer in the School of Education, Ulster University

The Department of Education’s draft Northern Ireland Curriculum 2028 is built on specified knowledge. Then it arrives at ‘the Troubles’ and devotes one unelaborated content statement to the conflict, its peace processes and continuing legacies.

Seamus Heaney gave the old wisdom its permanent form in 1975, in a poem whose title everyone in Northern Ireland knows without ever needing to have read it, “Whatever you say, say nothing”^[1]. The studied evasions, the safe remarks about the weather, the way people here learned to read a name, a school, an address, and give nothing back. It was never really advice about speech. The silence was about survival.

Just over half a century later, we like to tell ourselves we have moved past all that, yet the silence and sidestepping continue in 2026 in the new draft History curriculum.

In drafting the new Key Stage 3 History framework, the curriculum writing team sat down to specify what every pupil in every Northern Ireland school should learn about “the diverse impact of new inventions and technologies on farming, industry, transport and the environment in Britain and Ireland during the Industrial Revolution” including “the mechanisation of farming and developments in selective breeding” between 1800 and 1870^[2]. Furthermore, this topic was given four sub-points specifying exactly the content focus for teaching. The introduction of four-fold crop rotation and enclosure and the development and spread of canals and railways made the cut.

The same writing team, faced with the task of specifying what every pupil should learn about over fifty years of conflict, peace-making and unresolved legacies in the society they are growing up in, produced one sentence, “The origins and course of the Troubles, peace processes and legacies of the conflict in Northern Ireland”.^[3] Unlike the Industrial Revolution, there are no sub-points. No indicative content introduced by “including” and no worked examples, both of which are used liberally elsewhere throughout the document.

That the Industrial Revolution (and many other topics) is specified in much more detail than ‘the Troubles’ matters. It matters because the new draft History curriculum is where a largely imported ‘knowledge-rich’ model meets Northern Ireland’s most contested content. The meeting is revealing, and it deserves to be examined while the consultation is still open.

An engine built elsewhere

On 16 June the Minister of Education, Paul Givan, launched a public consultation running until 30 September on the “Northern Ireland Curriculum 2028 – an entitlement to excellence and equity”. The framing of this curriculum is ‘knowledge-rich’, purpose-led and, according to the Minister, a curriculum that will be an “engine of equity”.^[4]

Where that engine was built is now well documented, not least through Warwick Mansell’s reporting for “Education Uncovered”^[5]. Its design draws heavily on the traditionalist programme associated with the curriculum reforms initiated by Michael Gove from 2011 and implemented from 2014 with several English advisers steering the work. Lucy Crehan’s “A Strategic Review of the Northern Ireland Curriculum – A Foundation for the Future”^[6] supplied the blueprint for change. The Curriculum Taskforce carrying the design forward is chaired by Dr Christine Counsell, a key advocate of ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum design and an expert in History education, with Lucy Crehan as her deputy.

Recruitment of the writing teams appears to have run along the same grain. The expressions of interest form to be completed by applicants declared that “members of working groups should adhere to the principles of curriculum reform, specifically that the new framework will be designed to be ‘knowledge-rich’”^[7]. This prerequisite risked deterring Northern Ireland educationalists who, whilst welcoming the need for a curriculum refresh, questioned its governing philosophy. Thus, given the breadth of innovative international thinking available on education for the 21^st century, one might be forgiven for suggesting the draft proposals are less “A Foundation for the Future”^[8] than a return to the past.

A silence in the draft Key Stage 3 History curriculum?

History is not just another subject on the school curriculum. What and how young people learn about the past influences not only how they see themselves and the societies in which they live, but crucially, how they see, and may treat others. For this reason, History curricula are contested everywhere^[9] and nowhere is this truer than in divided societies like Northern Ireland with competing histories, as opposed to one shared story of the past. As the Curriculum Taskforce Chair herself has acknowledged “[T]o decide what history is to be taught, at school, regional or national level, is to exercise phenomenal power”.^[10] Yet power can be exercised by specificity; it can also be exercised by omission.

The curriculum’s promise

In a curriculum that stakes everything on the power of specified knowledge, this is exactly what makes the History curriculum’s failure to explore Northern Ireland’s recent contested past so stark. The proposition is that content should be specified, sequenced and shared, so that every pupil in every school learns a “common knowledge”^[11], essentially a curriculum entitlement rather than a learning lottery. This was Crehan’s diagnosis of the current curriculum’s weakness, and it is the promise on which the new reform rests.

In many respects, the draft History curriculum delivers on the ‘knowledge-rich’ promise. Picking up where the primary school History curriculum ends, a chronological structure spanning from 1100 to the present creates a framework for sequential stories of the past to unfold across Key Stage 3, where pupils are expected to learn about how Britain and Ireland shaped, and were shaped by, the wider world through a blend of deep dives and dip-ins into the past. In total, nine themes and 41 learning statements have been specified, many elaborated on with sub-points detailing indicative content to be taught and examples of possible content.

This approach is broadly consistent until the story reaches Northern Ireland’s recent past which merits just one learning statement in a single-sentence – and the promise falters.

The contrast is amplified by the treatment of the very last theme in the draft proposals, a local study of “Ordinary lives in Northern Ireland after 1945”^[12]. Here, pupils are required to learn about aspects of everyday life including the effects of a growing consumer culture on daily life, changes in society, shifts in social attitudes, and the experiences of ordinary life during ‘the Troubles’, complete with bullet points and examples (e.g. “how political violence and security measures affected everyday routines, travel and community relations; the search for safety and security and the role of family and neighbourhoods in sustaining daily life; efforts to create non-sectarian spaces such as the Peace People and the emergence of non-sectarian recreations such as punk)”^[13].

Compare how these two aspects of Northern Ireland’s past have been addressed and the pattern is unmistakable. The ‘social’ experience of the conflict is specified. The defining event of this society’s modern existence, ‘the Troubles’, the road to peace and the continuing legacies are not. Every pupil is guaranteed a common encounter with how people shopped, worked and lived through those decades. Pupils are not guaranteed a common encounter with why the conflict happened at all, which itself turned the ‘ordinary’ everyday into an attempt to normalise the extraordinary circumstances of conflict.

Studying how ordinary lives were shaped by ‘the Troubles’ is something which many in the history community have long advocated for and is a welcome addition to the History curriculum. It cannot, however, come at the expense of learning why the conflict happened. In a society still living with the legacies of conflict, it is precisely this powerful knowledge which young people need, and it is the one place the curriculum declines to be powerful.

Enshrining avoidance?

It may be that this curriculum silence is a drafting oversight; however, the absence of any reference to the divided nature of Northern Ireland in the draft “Vision Statement” for Key Stage 3 History makes this less likely. Therefore, the question must be asked. What message does this stark single sentence approach send to teachers?

Extensive research^[14] has documented how the teaching of Northern Ireland’s contested past has long been shaped by avoidance, coupled with concern about parental reactions and anxiety about giving offence. Whilst many pupils are avidly interested in learning about the Troubles, many teachers continue to step around the recent past rather than into it, uneasy about how choices of issues, figures and events might be received by pupils, parents and communities.

The Department of Education has stated this ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum would ensure that “every child in Northern Ireland is entitled to the same high‑quality education, no matter where they go to school”.^[15] This is why, in a divided society, a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’ may have genuine appeal to teachers, narrowing the space for ambiguity and constructed “selective histories” which exclude episodes of the past^[16]. In effect, it has the potential to lift from the individual teacher, whether in Portadown or Andersonstown, the burden of deciding which significant figures and key events should be taught. However, it is in this respect that the new draft History curriculum fails to live up to this promise. It is hard to avoid the inference that the writing team met the same difficulties that has faced many History teachers and resolved them the same way, by avoidance. Faced with the one historical period across the curriculum that could most warrant definition, the framework leaves it undefined, the danger being, that without further elaboration, ‘the Troubles’ risk being treated like the weather in the curriculum as it is stepped around in a ‘whatever you say, say nothing’ kind of way.

A curriculum built on the premise and promise that every child is entitled to the same content has left Northern Ireland’s most contested era, most challenging and most societally important content, ‘the Troubles’, open to potential avoidance. Consequently, some young people across Northern Ireland will continue to receive uneven teaching about the causes of the conflict and its legacies. What this new curriculum was meant to eradicate survives intact, in the one place in the curriculum it can do the most damage.

Local history, late in the year; light touch?

Sequencing compounds the problem. Not only is there a substantial volume of required content to be taught across Key Stage 3, but Northern Ireland’s troubled past will potentially not be taught until the tail end of a 900-year march through time and, importantly, the end of the statutory study of History. As this more challenging topic is followed directly with softer “local studies” exploring “Ordinary lives in Northern Ireland after 1945”, the predictable outcome may be that the causes and course of the conflict are moved through at speed, a decision tacitly endorsed by the absence of any content elaboration or clarity in direction through examples, while the relatively innocuous and uncontested social history which follows could well soak up the little teaching time remaining.

Powerful knowledge needs powerful learners

There is a bigger problem here, and it goes beyond missing curriculum bullet points. The real question for any curriculum in the 21^st century, and not only one for History, is what we want pupils to do with what they know. No one who takes education seriously questions the central importance of rich and secure knowledge of the past. But “knowledge must not be seen as an object for students to acquire but as information for them to engage with”^[17]. Otherwise, it is simply knowledge for the sake of knowing. Furthermore, the increased volume of prescribed content may squeeze time with little remaining for historical enquiry, examining interpretations and dialogue, making the framework’s disciplinary aspirations difficult to realise, and young people being sold short.

In a world of Generative AI, where information and misinformation are equally abundant, powerful knowledge is essential but insufficient. We need powerful learners, young people who are engaged and motivated to learn; who can connect, question, reason, evaluate and use evidence to arrive at a valid conclusion; who understand that information must be interrogated, not just remembered.

Consultation and change

The Minister of Education has described this curriculum as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity”^[18]. Curriculum reforms on this scale are rare, and the young people who pass through this one may carry its silences as much as its content.

The specificity contradiction is not a hard fix. If the mechanisation of farming is elaborated on with four sub-points, then the origins, course and legacies of the Northern Ireland conflict merit, at the very least, comparable treatment and attention. A curriculum that specifies almost everything except the thing that should matter most is not a foundation for the future, and almost certainly not for a socially cohesive one. It is avoidance, given the authority of print.

The next generation deserves an education that aspires to be transformative rather than transmissive, as well as honest about the hardest parts of our past. As drafted, the curriculum leaves teachers to tread this path into the past alone. That was the one lesson this curriculum was supposed to unlearn. Launching the draft curriculum consultation, the Minister stated, “This is not my curriculum – it is your curriculum…”^[19]. If this is truly “your curriculum”, whatever you say, have your say before 30 September.

Dr Clare McAuley

Ulster University

1. Heaney, S. (1975) Whatever you say, say nothing. In North (pp. 58–60). Faber & Faber ↑
2. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-06/Transformed%20-%20History.pdf, p. 18 ↑
3. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-06/Transformed%20-%20History.pdf, p. 20 ↑
4. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/news/givan-launches-consultation-new-northern-ireland-curriculum-2028 ↑
5. https://educationuncovered.co.uk/news/sound-familiar-controversial-conservative-education-reforms-seemingly-heading-for-northern-ireland ↑
6. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-06/NI%20Curriculum%20Review_0.pdf ↑
7. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-09/TransformEd-Curriculum-Application.pdf, p. 3 ↑
8. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-06/NI%20Curriculum%20Review_0.pdf ↑
9. For example, Nakou, I. and Barca, I. (eds)(2010). Contemporary public debates over history education; Taylor, T. and Guyver, R. (eds)(2012). History wars and the classroom: Global perspectives ↑
10. Counsell, C. (2000, p. 61), cited in Harris, R. and Burn, K., 2016. English history teachers’ views on what substantive content young people should be taught. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 48(4), pp.518-546 ↑
11. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-06/TransformED%20-%20Curriculum%20Overview%20Document.pdf, p. 4 ↑
12. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-06/Transformed%20-%20History.pdf, p. 20 ↑
13. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-06/Transformed%20-%20History.pdf, p. 20 ↑
14. See for example the work of McCully, A. (2012) ‘History Teaching, Conflict and the Legacy of the Past’, Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 7(2), pp. 145-159 ↑
15. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/news/givan-launches-consultation-new-northern-ireland-curriculum-2028 ↑

16. Korostelina, K.V. (2016) History Education in the Midst of Post-conflict Recovery: Lessons Learned in Karina V. Korostelina, Bentrovato, D., Korostelina, K.V. and Schulze, M. (eds)(2016). History can bite: History education in divided and postwar societies (Vol. 141) (Göttingen: V&R Unipress)

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17. Barton, K.C. and Ho, L.C. (2021) Curriculum for justice and harmony: Deliberation, knowledge, and action in social and civic education. Routledge, p. 66 ↑
18. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/news/givan-launches-consultation-new-northern-ireland-curriculum-2028 ↑
19. https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/news/givan-launches-consultation-new-northern-ireland-curriculum-2028 ↑