You may not have heard of him, but this man is changing our kids’ views of British identity

Last week, The Times reported that Robin Walker, the new-ish schools minister, has commissioned the development of a “new model curriculum” for history for four- to 14-year-olds. He wants to move schools away from endlessly teaching the Tudors and 20th-century European history and onto something broader and more diverse, he said.

“This is about the range of opportunities there are within the curriculum to teach world history and the relevance of that to modern Britain,” Walker said. “Do we want people to learn about the Tudors and the Second World War? Yes, absolutely. But we want to do it in a context of understanding the world and understanding Britain’s place in the world.

“I don’t think you can do that by [doing] what happened for quite a period of time in too many schools — focusing on 20th-century European history again and again and again. I want to see a well-sequenced and broad curriculum, building a common knowledge among students, both of the established canon of history but also a more global perspective. If we can get that right, we will have something which is going to be relevant to more students.”

It became yet more interesting as he went on to say he wanted to embed “diversity” into the curriculum too.

Walker appears to be moving beyond Michael Gove’s hugely controversial rewriting of the national curriculum in 2013. Gove faced a fierce backlash when he said he wanted history to focus on “our Island story” and tried to make it as chronological as possible.

This issue goes to the very heart of how we see ourselves as a country. The act of editing what bits of our past young people should be mandated is integral to the act of building a national identity. To simplify, the contrast between Walker and Gove appears to be internationalist vs inward-looking. And to some degree I think Walker is right to consider refocusing on the place of Britain in the wider world – and the history of how that wider world impacted on Britain.

But – and one needs to be careful here – there is also something profoundly important about the “origin story” – the narrative of nation – that a country tells itself.

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The fact the story about Walker’s new curriculum was positioned after pages and pages on the Ukraine invasion gave it more relevance. Central to the war has been the “Story of Ukraine” and a rejection of Putin’s vile claims that Russia and Ukraine have always been the same country. National story and national history are, and always have been, a battlefield of international rivalry. This is one area in which Ukraine really is winning.

Unlike in Ukraine, it is unlikely that any time soon any differences over our national story will be militarised, but it is profoundly important nonetheless. For at least a decade – since the Scottish referendum first became a tangible possibility – this country has been wrestling with an identity crisis. A new row over what should or shouldn’t be taught in history classrooms could be a fresh chapter in this sometimes existential debate.

How our young people are schooled to see Britain’s place in the history will be central if we ever do regain a sense of national confidence. I wish Robin Walker well – he has set himself a huge challenge. I only hope he hasn’t underestimated its importance.

Ed Dorrell is a director at Public First