Decolonising the Curriculum

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Decolonising the curriculum means critically examining which knowledge, voices, and ways of knowing are valued in schools, and why. It is not simply adding a few new authors to a reading list or running a Black History Month assembly. It is a structural process of questioning whose knowledge is treated as universal, whose is treated as specialist, and what that communicates to every learner who walks through your door.

For UK teachers, this question is both professionally urgent and personally complex. The latest DfE schools, pupils and characteristics release reports that 38.0% of pupils across all school types are from minority ethnic backgrounds in 2024/25. That demographic fact does not by itself prove what the curriculum should contain, but it does make curriculum representation, belonging and intellectual breadth a live professional issue.

This guide gives you the theoretical grounding, practical tools, and subject-specific strategies to begin that process in your school.

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What Does Decolonising the Curriculum Mean?

Decolonising curriculum work examines whose knowledge schools treat as standard, whose perspectives are framed as additional, and which intellectual traditions learners meet as part of the normal curriculum. The practical question for teachers is not whether one author can settle the debate, but whether the curriculum makes its knowledge choices visible enough to be examined.

Diversification adds authors and references, (Ahmed, 2012). It keeps the curriculum mostly unchanged. Decolonisation, (Spivak, 1988), questions why some knowledge is favoured. It challenges traditions seen as universal, (Said, 1978; Bhabha, 1994).

Andrews (2016) says race equality means access. Decolonisation questions current structures. Wa Thiong'o (1986) thinks language and knowledge are key. Colonial education taught learners a worldview. It presented this view as neutral.

The concept of the "hidden curriculum" (Giroux, 1983; Apple, 1979) is useful here. What schools communicate through omission is as powerful as what they communicate through inclusion. When learners study two years of European history without encountering a single African intellectual tradition, the message is not neutral. It is a statement about what counts as knowledge.

Diversifying the curriculum	Decolonising the curriculum
Adding new texts, authors, or topics to the existing curriculum	Questioning which knowledge is treated as standard and why
Including Black History Month or Diwali assemblies	Examining whose perspective frames history year-round
Adding a novel by a Black author to the reading list	Examining which literary traditions are taught as "the canon" and which are taught as exceptions
Leaves the knowledge hierarchy intact	Challenges the knowledge hierarchy itself

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Why Does It Matter in UK Classrooms?

The statistical case should be stated carefully. The DfE 2023/24 suspensions and permanent exclusions release shows that exclusion and suspension rates vary by pupil characteristics, including ethnicity, SEN, free school meals, sex and year group. Those data do not prove a curriculum cause, but they do show why schools should examine belonging, representation and access to knowledge with care.

Monocultural curricula disadvantage all learners, including those not from minorities. Learners are poorly prepared for Britain's diverse society (Banks, 2006). This constrains everyone's understanding, say Nieto (2010) and Gorski (2009).

Michael Apple, in "Ideology and Curriculum" (1979), argued that the school curriculum is never neutral. It is always a selection from the culture: a choice about which knowledge is worth transmitting. The question is not whether the curriculum reflects a set of values and priorities, but whose values and priorities it reflects. Stuart Hall (1997) extended this through his analysis of representation: when the West is always the subject of knowledge and non-Western cultures are always the object, a particular view of the world is naturalised as common sense.

National debate about race, schooling and disadvantage is contested, so teachers should avoid over-claiming from a single public report. A safer school-level task is to review local curriculum choices, behaviour data, attainment patterns and learner voice, then ask whether every group of learners is receiving rigorous access to broad knowledge and a genuine sense of belonging.

Learner voice can help schools understand whether pupils recognise their histories, communities and intellectual traditions in the curriculum. Use that evidence alongside established culturally responsive teaching literature such as Gay (2010) and Ladson-Billings (1994), rather than relying on a vague or untraceable report citation.

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The Theoretical Framework Behind the Movement

Studying key thinkers builds better understanding. This knowledge helps you discuss decolonisation with confidence. Share Bhabha (1994) and Spivak's (1988) research to influence colleagues. Said (1978) provides useful ideas too.

Freire (1970) is a key theorist. He critiqued "banking education," where teachers give knowledge to learners passively. Freire preferred "problem-posing education," where learners and teachers engage critically. "Conscientisation," or critical awareness, is vital to decolonising pedagogy. For Freire, education was political; it either upheld or challenged power (see conflict theory).

Frantz Fanon (1961) approached colonial education from a different angle. In "The Wretched of the Earth," he argued that colonial education worked through identity erasure: by teaching colonised peoples to see themselves through the eyes of the coloniser, it undermined their sense of cultural worth. The implications for classroom practice are not simply about which texts you teach. They are about what messages your curriculum sends about who is capable, who has contributed to human knowledge, and who has a future.

Bhambra (2007) uses "connected histories" to challenge Eurocentrism. She says European industrialisation needed colonial resource extraction. Teach the Industrial Revolution alongside the Atlantic slave trade. Bhambra criticises "methodological nationalism", changing history and social science teaching.

Michael Apple (1979) places the curriculum question within a structural analysis of power. The curriculum is not a neutral selection of the best that has been thought and said. It is a cultural selection that reflects the interests of dominant groups. This does not mean that everything in the current curriculum is wrong. It means that teachers have a professional obligation to ask whose interests a given selection of knowledge serves.

Santos (2014) says epistemicide is colonisation destroying non-Western knowledge. Santos argues colonisation suppressed indigenous maths, medicine, and ecology. Teaching Western science with other traditions recognises epistemicide. Santos (2014) believes this acknowledges knowledge loss for the learner.

Researchers like Bernstein (1971) and Bourdieu (1977) offer language for understanding curricula. This helps teachers explain current content choices. Their work also provides a basis for curriculum improvements, say Apple (2004) and Young (2013).

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What a Decolonised Curriculum Looks Like in Practice

There is no single "decolonised curriculum." It is a process of critical questioning rather than a finished product. That process operates at three levels.

Content refers to what is taught. This includes the texts, historical figures, scientists, mathematicians, and events that appear on the timetable. Content change is the most visible and often the easiest starting point. You can audit who appears in your reading lists, your history units, and your science lessons.

Pedagogy refers to how it is taught. This includes the classroom methods you use and the kind of thinking you ask learners to do. A decolonising pedagogy does not simply add diverse content to a teacher-led lecture. It invites learners to question sources, consider perspectives, and examine whose point of view frames a given account. Dialogic pedagogy and critical literacy are natural partners here.

Epistemology refers to whose ways of knowing are valued. This is the deepest level and the one most schools do not yet reach. It asks: do we treat Western scientific method as the only valid form of inquiry? Do we treat academic writing as the only legitimate way to demonstrate knowledge? Oral traditions, collective knowledge-making, and non-linear ways of organising information are knowledge practices too.

In practice, decolonising the curriculum looks like this:

• A History teacher teaching the British Empire using primary sources from colonised peoples alongside the standard "civilising mission" narrative, asking learners to identify whose perspective each source represents.
• An English teacher teaching Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" not as a "diverse" addition but as a text that challenges learners to read Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" differently.
• A Science teacher acknowledging the Islamic Golden Age contributions of Ibn al-Haytham (optics), al-Khwarizmi (algebra), and Brahmagupta and Aryabhata (zero and positional number systems).
• A Geography teacher questioning the Mercator projection and showing learners how map projections carry political choices about which land masses to enlarge.
• A PSHE teacher designing lessons that reflect the full range of family structures and identities present in UK schools, rather than using a default white, nuclear-family model.

None of these changes requires dismantling the entire curriculum. Each of them requires you to ask a single question before any unit of teaching: whose perspective is the default here, and is that choice explicit or invisible?

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Subject-Specific Strategies for Teachers

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History

Lee and Ashby (2000) show acknowledging different views helps learners. Foucault (1977) thought power impacts learners; teachers must think about this. Seixas (2006) encourages critical analysis of historical sources, which supports learners. These ideas are useful.

First, teach primary source interrogation as a skill that asks not just "what does this source tell us?" but "who wrote this, from what position, and what does its existence tell us about power?" A letter from a colonial administrator tells us something about colonial administration. It tells us very little about the experience of colonised people unless we treat its silences as evidence.

Rodney's (1972) work helps older learners understand varied views of the "Scramble for Africa". Hopkins shows Africa had intricate economies before Europe arrived. This offers another viewpoint on history.

Third, connect KS3 migration and empire units explicitly. The history of the British Empire and the history of post-war immigration to the UK are the same history. Teaching them in isolation produces learners who cannot make the connection.

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English and Media

Diversifying your reading lists is not the same as tokenism. Tokenism means including one "diverse" text in a list of otherwise standard texts, treating it as a concession rather than as a work with its own intellectual tradition. A more rigorous approach:

Pair Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other with Woolf. Use Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists with Wollstonecraft. Connect the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism. The point is not to add isolated names, but to help learners compare intellectual traditions and literary movements with rigour.

Critical media literacy matters. Learners can compare how news coverage frames the Global South and Europe, whose expertise is quoted, which images are used, and what historical context is supplied or omitted. This turns representation into an evidence-reading task rather than a slogan.

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Science and Maths

The history of science offers specific entry points here. Rosalind Franklin's contribution to the discovery of DNA's structure, and how that contribution was sidelined, is a well-documented story that combines the history of science with a lesson in how attribution works. Charles Drew's development of blood banks and his treatment by the US medical establishment is another.

Al-Khwarizmi (ninth century) gave us "algorithm," showing maths' global roots. Brahmagupta (598-668 CE) and Aryabhata (476-550 CE) created zero. Sharing this history with learners builds maths' true richness (Joseph, 2011).

Challenging "discovery" language in science is also worth doing explicitly with learners. Who "discovered" penicillin, and what does that mean for the other researchers whose work contributed? Who "discovered" America? These questions develop the critical thinking skills that science education needs.

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PSHE, Citizenship, and SMSC

UNESCO (2015) suggests global citizenship education explores power and rights. It also examines responsibility on a global scale. Critical media literacy helps learners understand how news shapes world views. (Kellner & Share, 2007; Freire, 1970).

Guest speakers from diverse backgrounds are most effective when they are integrated into learning, not confined to celebration events. A scientist from a South Asian background speaking about their career path in the context of a science unit on the history of mathematics is more powerful than an assembly on cultural diversity.

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How to Audit Your Curriculum

A curriculum design audit is the most concrete starting point for most schools. The following five-step framework can be adapted for a single department or run across the whole school.

List every named person, place and intellectual tradition in each subject, noting patterns across year groups. Is your list mainly European or North American? Which civilisations, languages and knowledge traditions appear only as special topics? This creates useful audit data, not an instant judgement.

Find omissions in your curriculum. Does it miss civilisations or ideas? Covering Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe but not Mali or pre-colonial India is a choice. Name that choice clearly for your learners (Wineburg, 2018).

Step 3: Question framing. For each major unit, ask: whose perspective is the "default" narrator? In a unit on the British Empire, is the default perspective British or colonial? In a unit on the Industrial Revolution, is the connection to the Atlantic slave trade made explicit? This step is harder than the content audit because framing is often invisible.

Step 4: Examine assessment questions. Do your exam questions and essay prompts privilege knowledge of particular cultural contexts? A question that asks learners to compare two European political movements implicitly assumes European history is the relevant frame of reference for all learners. This is not always wrong, but it should be a conscious choice.

Consult learners and your community. Ask pupils what they notice about the curriculum, especially where voices, histories or examples feel absent. Talk to parents and community groups where changes affect local context. This closes the gap between teaching intent and learner experience.

Subject	Representation audit	Framing audit	Epistemology audit
History	Who are the named figures? Which civilisations appear?	Whose perspective frames each unit?	Are oral histories or non-documentary sources valued?
English	Who are the authors? Which literary traditions are present?	Which tradition is "the canon" and which is "alternative"?	Are oral literary traditions treated as valid?
Science	Who are the scientists named? Which cultures' contributions appear?	Is science presented as exclusively Western?	Are non-Western scientific methods ever acknowledged?
Maths	Are non-European mathematicians named?	Is the history of mathematics framed as a European story?	Are multiple problem-solving approaches valued?

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Common Objections and How to Address Them

Many teachers worry about decolonising the curriculum. They share these concerns with colleagues and leaders. This section balances those worries. We treat them as genuine, not insincere. They require clear and thoughtful answers.

Objection 1: "We already cover Black History Month."

Black History Month is valuable. It is also insufficient as a response to curriculum decolonisation. Andrews (2016) draws the distinction clearly: a one-month focus on exceptional Black individuals, largely framed around the American civil rights movement, does not change the underlying curriculum structure. It can reinforce the message that Black history is a special topic rather than a thread running through all history. The response is not to remove Black History Month but to ask what the rest of the curriculum communicates the other eleven months of the year.

Objection 2: "It will lower academic rigour."

Address the common objection directly. Bhambra (2007) argues diverse curricula enhance rigour. Learners compare different accounts, improving evaluation skills. This is more challenging than reading one view. Interrogating knowledge sources is rigorous, says Bhambra (2007). Do not assume the current curriculum is best; examine it closely.

Objection 3: "Parents will complain."

Parents may worry the work is political. Frame it clearly: it's about curriculum breadth, not ideology. The Equality Act 2010 and Ofsted support this (Section 8). Explain changes clearly beforehand to avoid issues. Schools find parent responses are often better than expected.

Objection 4: "I don't know enough about other cultures to teach this."

Decolonising teaching requires curiosity, not expertise. Model learning with your learners, focusing on whose knowledge counts (hooks, 1994). The Historical Association and Diverse Educators (UK) provide helpful resources. Start this vital work even if unsure.

Objection 5: "This is political."

Yes. But so is the current curriculum. Apple (1979) makes this point with precision: there is no neutral curriculum. Every curriculum reflects a set of choices about whose knowledge is worth transmitting. The choice to teach Shakespeare but not Chinua Achebe is a political choice. The choice to teach the Industrial Revolution without teaching the Atlantic slave trade is a political choice. The question is not whether the curriculum is political but whether those political choices are acknowledged or concealed. Decolonising the curriculum means making the choices visible and subjecting them to rational scrutiny. That is the opposite of ideological imposition.

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Decolonising the Curriculum and the Law

Understanding the legal framework helps you make the case to leadership and governors with confidence.

The Equality Act 2010 requires schools to address three aims. First, schools must stop unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation. Second, they should advance equality for all learners (Equality Act 2010). Third, schools need to foster good relations between diverse learners (Equality Act 2010).

"Race" is a protected characteristic under the Act. The PSED does not require schools to decolonise the curriculum by name. It does require schools to actively consider how their practices, including their curriculum, affect learners from different racial backgrounds. A school that has never examined whether its curriculum serves all learners equally is not meeting the spirit of the PSED.

Ofsted's education inspection framework for use from November 2025 includes curriculum and teaching among the areas inspectors evaluate. It does not require schools to decolonise the curriculum by name, so the stronger claim is professional rather than prescriptive: schools should be able to explain how curriculum choices are broad, coherent and appropriate for their learners.

The law doesn't mandate "decolonising" the curriculum. The National Curriculum sets content, but teachers choose much more (DfE, 2013). Schools should review their curriculum, but law and inspections don't require it.

The DfE's Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) guidance requires schools to ensure that teaching reflects the diversity of learners' lives and family structures. This creates a specific legal hook for the PSHE and citizenship dimensions of decolonising work.

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Working with Colleagues and Leadership

Curriculum change at scale requires a whole-school approach. But most whole-school change begins with a single teacher, in a single department, doing something differently.

Making the case to a sceptical SLT is easier when you frame the work in terms of curriculum excellence rather than ideology. Leadership teams respond to evidence about learner outcomes, inspection readiness, and professional standards. The PSED, the Ofsted breadth criteria, and the research on belonging and attainment (Rumberger, 2011) give you a professional case. Framing the work as "improving the rigour and reach of our curriculum" is both honest and more likely to secure buy-in than framing it as "addressing injustice."

Lesson study groups on units can aid CPD. Book clubs using texts like Eddo-Lodge (2017) work well. Cross-department groups can audit the curriculum. Structured tasks work better than open discussion. Focused audit questions help more (e.g. about civilisations).

Rollock (2019) shows global majority staff face extra work addressing race inequality. UK schools often fail to recognise or support them. White teachers should note colleagues may have strong feelings about race. Don't ask colleagues to represent their communities in curriculum discussions. Ask them for their expertise as colleagues.

A middle leader strategy that has worked in multiple schools: identify one subject, one year group, one unit. Design a modified version of that unit that incorporates two or three of the changes outlined in this guide. Teach it. Collect learner feedback. Bring the feedback to the department meeting. The evidence of what learners say and how they engage is more persuasive than any theoretical argument.

Explain changes to parents beforehand to prevent issues. A short letter home helps when it explains the what and the why, keeps the focus on curriculum breadth and rigour, and makes clear that teachers are extending knowledge rather than lowering standards.

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Key Takeaways

Decolonising the curriculum means asking critical questions, not just making statements. It works on three levels: content, teaching methods, and knowledge validity. Freire (1970) contrasted banking education with problem-posing education, Bhambra (2007) connected histories, Andrews (2016) contrasted access with structural change, and Apple (1979) treated curriculum as a selection of knowledge.

A curriculum audit is the practical starting point for most schools. It identifies what is present, what is absent, and whose perspective is the default. The Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty create conditions in which that audit is professionally prudent. Ofsted's curriculum breadth criteria reinforce it.

The most effective change happens when individual teachers act with clarity and confidence, document what they do and what learners say, and bring that evidence to colleagues. Start with one subject, one unit, one term. The complexity of the theoretical debate should not prevent the simplicity of the practical step.

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Limitations and Critiques of Decolonising the Curriculum

Decolonising the curriculum has challenges. Teachers should understand the criticisms (Bhambra, 2014; Zinn, 2003). This understanding helps teachers engage rigorously. It also helps pre-empt objections (Andreotti et al., 2011; Dei, 2010).

Tokenism is a risk. Superficial changes, like Black History Month, won't fix inequality unless assessments change. Crenshaw (1989) says power stays the same if diversity work lacks structural shifts.

"Decolonising" lacks a clear definition. Tuck and Yang (2012) say it means returning land. Using it loosely for curriculum change risks weakening the term's political impact. Teachers must define the change they seek.

Teacher confidence and training gaps. Research by the Centre for Education and Youth (2021) found that fewer than one in four UK teachers felt adequately prepared to teach diverse histories. Without sustained CPD and access to specialist resources, well-intentioned practice can perpetuate inaccuracies.

Schools in similar communities may see resistance to curriculum changes. Parents sometimes think diversification is political, Andrews (2021) notes. He argues that schools need to talk to communities. Dialogue is vital, not just a choice, according to Andrews (2021).

Time limits hinder curriculum changes. Exam content in England stays mostly the same. Teachers struggle to add diverse views to existing syllabuses. This is a systemic problem that teachers alone cannot fix (Apple, 1979; Bernstein, 1971; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977).