Why are Taxpayers Being Charged £1.2 Million for ‘Inclusive’ GCSE History?

Is the history curriculum ‘diverse’ enough? Apparently not, according to a group of university researchers who’ve been awarded £1.2 million in taxpayer funding for their project ‘Inclusive Histories’. 

The three-year project is being led by Royal Holloway and the AQA exam board, so as to “inform future GCSE specification reform at AQA and other awarding bodies”. AQA is one of the three main GCSE exam boards in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (along with Edexcel (Pearson), OCR and WJEC (Welsh Joint Education Committee). It marks up to half of all GCSEs and A-levels taken in the UK every year.

The abstract makes clear what problem the researchers are trying to solve, claiming that “the taught curriculum for secondary schools often fails to incorporate new, diverse histories, acting as a barrier to Global Majority Engagement”, and that students themselves are calling for “better representation of gender, sexuality, disability, neurodiversity and class [and] the intersectionality of these identities and lived experiences”.

Inclusive Histories will support the AQA specification “Britain: Power and the People c1170 to the present day”, charting “the struggle for rights of representation from Magna Carta” to now.

With the project beginning in September last year and due to finish the same month in 2027, the syllabus isn’t currently available to peruse. But you can get a sense of what might be involved from examining some of organisations involved, listed below:

I’ve had a nose around some of their websites, to get an idea of what their ideas of ‘inclusivity’ look like. Today I shall spoil Daily Sceptic readers with what I found:

The Glasgow Women’s Library

The GWL looks innocuous enough, until you go onto its social media account and spot that it’s been deemed a “Library of Sanctuary”, a status “awarded to libraries that go above and beyond to create welcoming, inclusive, and empowering spaces for people who have experienced forced displacement.” 

To add, I recently wrote about “Boroughs of Sanctuary” for the Daily Sceptic, which is effectively an open-borders scheme imported from the US Democrats.

The GWL has also praised Nicola Sturgeon and curated books for LGBTQ+ History Month, including “a feminist inclusive anti-racist non-binary field guide for graphic designers”.

People’s History Museum

Based in Manchester, the People’s History Museum describes itself as “the national museum of democracy”. Its website has resources for ages seven-plus on the Peterloo Massacre and Migration, the latter including animations on “the lived experiences of people who have migrated to the UK” and the tale of “Melina, who sought asylum in the UK due to facing discrimination based on her sexuality”.

The Black Cultural Archives

The organisation already runs its own Youth Programme, which gives an insight into what could soon be on AQA’s curriculum. In 2025, for instance, the Black Cultural Archives projects “explored the history of Brixton’s Black LGBTQ+ community” and students made a “commemorative zine” titled ‘Black, Queer, Always Here‘. Here are screenshots of it:

It includes a page which reads: “It’s not the same for black and brown people in the global south and we need to stop forcing white queerness into that context”; and “coming out is a uniquely white queer thing”.

Bishopsgate Institute

Another organisation involved in reshaping the curriculum is the Bishopsgate Institute, which “holds one of the most extensive collections of LGBTQIA+ history, politics and culture in the UK”. It has held events including ‘Queer Tango’ and ‘Desi Queers: LGBTQ+ South Asian and Cultural Belonging in Britain‘, as well as flying the trans-inclusive Pride flag to celebrate Pride Month:

So there you have it; this is just a sample of the institutions that will be reshaping children’s GCSEs. That’s before we get to some of the experts involved in ‘Inclusive Histories’, such as Dr Amy Tooth Murphy, whose research profile is below:

To add, ‘Inclusive Histories’ is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which is funded by the UK Research and Innovation, a department funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (all ultimately adding up to being taxpayer funded).

You can find out even more about AHRC in my previous piece for the Daily Sceptic: ‘If Rachel Reeves Wants to Fill the £22 Billion “Black Hole” She Should Start by Abolishing the Arts and Humanities Research Council.’

Charlotte Gill regularly publishes about the use of taxpayers’ money to fund Left-wing causes and Left-wing researchers in Woke Waste, her Substack. You can subscribe here.