Chapter 4: Imperial Ideas and Ideologies of Empire: British Imperial History in Educational Books for KS3 History

In this chapter, we examine historical narratives of imperialism in commercially available textbooks oriented to secondary school content in England.¹ In the absence of standardized textbooks, and given the fragmented state of the U.K. education system, we have used commercially available secondary school educational books (study and revision guides) as research material. In English state schools there are no mandatory textbooks and, in general, state schools do not require students to purchase textbooks until the final 2 years of secondary school when students begin to study for their subject-specific General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams (Ages 14–16). However, most secondary state schools do subscribe to online providers of educational resources, which are mostly owned and produced by mainstream educational publishing houses. The published textbooks of some of these publishers are examined in this study in the form of Key Stage 3 History study and revision guides.