SCHOOL history is in crisis, according to one of the most prestigious groups of academics ever to gather at a weekend conference of secondary teachers.

Simon Schama, Niall Ferguson, David Starkey, John Roberts, Michael Wood and Antony Beevor united at Prince Charles’s summer school to condemn a curriculum that leaves some pupils with only one hour of teaching a week. Even the best scholars emerge knowing little more than “Hitler and the Henrys”, they said.

The historians urged ministers to make the subject a central part of the school curriculum, and called for wholesale reform of a piecemeal examination structure now dominated by the Second World War.

Professor Ferguson, whose six-part history of the British Empire will be broadcast next January, said the quality of history candidates at Oxford is “almost certainly going down”, with few sixth-formers able to demonstrate a breadth of historical knowledge.

“Nearly every candidate wants to talk about Hitler, possibly Stalin, maybe Mussolini. Then there are one or two left over who want to talk about Henry VIII,” he said.

Professor Schama, who now teaches in the United States, said that even American schools appear to have more freedom and a “less crushing” apparatus of assessment.

Fellow speakers Tom Stoppard, Joanna Trollope and Poet Laureate Andrew Motion joined the historians in calling for a less restrictive, more creative curriculum, returning control to teachers.

The four-day conference presented a series of recommendations to a panel from the Department for Education and Skills, the Teacher Training Agency and the Office for Standards in Education, saying:

* The DfES should encourage further meetings of academics and teachers;

* The department should “positively endorse” the importance of history, ensuring that all pupils have some experience of the subject up to the age of 16;

* English teachers should be given greater flexibility and more room for creativity;

* The DfES should investigate how assessment can be made less burdensome and “stifling”.

Bernice McCabe, the course director and conference organiser, said: “If you give people responsibility for the things that they do, they will do those things well.”

David Normington, permanent secretary at the DfES, promised to set up a meeting to discuss assessment problems and said that, personally, he was in favour of reducing prescription in the post-14 curriculum still further.

But there is no prospect of legislation to protect history, or of moving to teacher assessment in place of tests. Schools and teachers, he said, should find more space for creativity in the existing framework.

“I am not about to announce the end of assessment. It is a major engine of educational reform. It is not on to have all teacher assessment. There has to be some external validation.

“The main issue we all have to address is that of time. The question is how can we make the space for teachers to do the kind of things they want to do. But it is not something that can be solved by a bit of regulation at the centre. Let us (at the DfES) get out of the way. Please do not ask us to prescribe more.”

History best practice, Teacher magazine, page 7