It includes - among many other things - the following which should be of direct interest to BASA members. Everything in red is quoted directly from the orders which are statutory and must begin to be implemented in September 2008.

.....Cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. Undertanding the diverse experiences and ideas, beliefs and attitudes of men, women and children in past societies and how these have shaped the world....

Appropriate links should be made between some of the parallel events, changes and developments in British, European and world history... (For example, a study of the political and cultural achievements of the Islamic states from 600-1600 could provide a contrasting overview of the medieval period in Britain...)

....the impact through time of the movement and settlement of diverse peoples to, from and within the British Isles...(This includes studying the wide cultural, social and ethnic diversity of Britain from the Middle Ages to the 20th century and how this has helped shape Britain's identity....)

... the development of trade, colonisation, industrialisation and technology; the British Empire and its impact on different people in Britain and overseas; pre-colonial civilisations; the nature and effects of the slave trade; resistance and decolonisation...(There should be a focus on the British Empire and its effect both on Britain and on the regions it colonised, as well as its legacy in the contemporary world (eg in Africa, the Middle East and India). Recognition should also be given to the cultures, beliefs and achievements of some of the societies prior to European colonisation, such as the West African kingdoms. The study of the slave trade should include resistance, the abolition of slavery and the work of people such as Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce...)

If you want to see the whole thing, the QCA will launch its Secondary Review website tomorrow. It will also include examples from schools who have started implementing the new curriculum, to help guide other schools. Those examples include Copleston High School in Ipswich who redesigned their schemes of work heavily influencd by Dan Lyndon, so as to run Black, Asian and women's history throughout the key stage. Their new scheme, quoted on the website, includes blackamoores in Elizabethan England, Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano, William Cuffay and the Chartists, black and Asian soldiers in the Great War, civil rights in the USA and apartheid.

Another example given on the new QCA website is from Thurleston High School in Ipswich and highlights their Thomas Clarkson project (with students designing a memorial to Clarkson - film of them beside Clarkson's grave will be on the website in September) and the Ipswich/Caribbean Experience project in which they investigate the diverse reactions to and experiences of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to Ipswich in the 1960s.

None of the examples given tackle 'pre-colonial civilisations.... resistance and decolonisation' but this is because we only got this written in a few weeks ago and it was not in the draft version which went public earlier this year.

In the end there was very little interference from government. The only cases of this were the insertion of the Holocaust and the two world wars; the insertion of slavery; and the separation of the starnds of content into British and World so that it appears that the emphasis is on British history. We counterbalanced that be inserting the sentence quoted above about making links between parallel events; and this has been accepted.

On another matter, at the Schools History Project conference last weekend Dan did a workshop on Walter Tull which was a great success (I spoke to a Head of History who'd attended and intended to use it all in his school) and I did one on Pirates whih was heavily influenced by Linebaugh and Rediker's work drawing links rom the Levellers and Diggers through the pirate democracies and slave insurrections to William Davidson, Robert Wedderburn and the 19th century radicals.