I recently attended a meeting in Birmingham organised by the Midlands History Forum to discuss the new UK History Curriculum, due to be introduced in September 2014 and still being discussed. The almost unanimous consensus was that the curriculum is inconsistent, incoherent, with specific elements included without any apparent justification, too prescriptive and failing to include adequate historical skills.

From my point of view I thought the curriculum completely failed to develop interdisciplinary links or to set human history within a wider geographical or climatic context, let alone the sort of astronomical and cosmic context which Big History calls for.

I left feeling that UK teachers will have enough to worry about during the next few years without being too bothered with Big History. But I will continue to promote the idea nevertheless.