At A-level, OCR offers one paper on the modern Middle East – worth 40 per cent of the history course – which includes Zionism, Israel and the Palestinians. It is one of 21 options; a second option, on the British Empire, also covers British involvement in Palestine up to 1948. AQA’s A-level choice also has one option out of 19 on the British Empire, which touches on the British mandate in Palestine.
But controversy over the textbook for the GCSE also points to potential difficulties in teaching the subject. Pearson withdrew Conflict in the Middle East c1945-1995 (and its sister volume for the international GCSE) after the intervention of UK Lawyers for Israel and the Board of Deputies and issued a revised edition.
Now the exam board has withdrawn the books again for a further review, after a report by the British Committee for Universities of Palestine complained the revisions made them too pro-Israel.
Whether the political sensitivities around the subject are leading schools to shy away from it is open to question. But one teacher who believes there is certainly interest in it is Michael Davies, founder of the Parallel Histories project, which has created online teaching resources that explore events from both the Israeli and Palestinian points of view.
Parallel Histories now works with 220 schools, including JCoSS, mainly in years 9 and 12. “So the demand is there,” he said. “Schools were just looking for a way of teaching the topic which wouldn’t leave them open to accusations of bias.”
School protests over Gaza have shown that “just bec ause the Israel-Palestine conflict isn’t taught in school doesn’t mean that children aren’t learning about it from other sources,” he said. “We think it’s infinitely preferable that it is taught in school.”
