The historians quoted do not know what is in the KS3 curriculum. As is clear from the Historical Association report, it is primarily school managers removing or reducing history as a discrete subject that leads to fewer children choosing it. I would add a misguided tendency for some to see history as a “difficult” subject and the false view that it is not a passport to many careers.

The problem is not relevance or content but political and managerial decisions which, with transient fashions for a non-subject-based curriculum, are squeezing an essential subject.

Martin Spafford, George Mitchell School, Waltham Forest, London.