While your coverage of the Tide-Runnymede Trust report on teaching migration, belonging and empire is welcome, calls for making the topics compulsory serve to eclipse the report’s key recommendation (The true story of Britain’s empire should include all of us, Journal, 6 July; Lessons on migration and empire should be mandatory, says trust, 3 July). This was for a fully funded, comprehensive and sustainable continuing professional development programme for teachers across subjects to support their teaching in these areas. It also acknowledges the range of complexities and sensitivities at play when teaching these subjects in the classroom and makes the case for an integrated approach to professional development based on a range of scholarship and empirical data along the lines of the Department for Education-funded Centre for Holocaust Education.
I believe that the evidence shows it is only by prioritising the needs of teachers and young people that we will enable more effective teaching of the topics of migration, belonging and empire.
Dr Jason Todd
Co-author of Tide-Runnymede report
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