Few schools now teach the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. A new project aims to persuade teachers of its importance and show there are two sides to every story

In 2014 history teacher Michael Davies took a group of his GCSE and A-level students on a field trip to Israel and Palestine. For the first half of the week they immersed themselves in the story of Israel and the tragedy of the Holocaust; for the second they visited the West Bank and played football with boys in a refugee camp. The trip was transformative for the students: “Their minds were wrenched round,” Davies says. “Suddenly they saw that there are two completely different ways of looking at things. That history is constructed and it’s often constructed with a purpose.”

For the students of Lancaster Royal Grammar school their study of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been eye-opening and life-changing. But given trends in exam syllabuses, it’s not an experience many others are likely to share, as the subject quietly slips down the agenda of exam boards.

In 2012 the Curriculum for Cohesion, a research programme based at Soas University of London, made a detailed submission to the national curriculum review. They recommended a unit of study on the Arab-Israeli conflict stretching back to 1896 to assess whether the roots of the hostilities provide a clue to a solution. In their view, students’ opinions on the subject “need to be set in a deep historical perspective and the history classroom gives them the opportunity to scrutinise the issue in depth and from different points of view”.

Yet of the five exam boards for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, three have removed Israel-Palestine from their GCSE offering since 2014. AQA offers a unit on conflict and tension in the Middle East, but it starts in 1990. That leaves Pearson Edexcel with the only historically far-reaching offer of “Conflict in the Middle East 1945-95” – although as Davies points out, in the centenary year of the Balfour Declaration this doesn’t leave much scope for a study of Britain’s role. Exam boards say there is a lack of take up. The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment says only one school out of 170 chose Israel-Palestine as a GCSE option.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Palestinians walk past a concrete wall separating the outskirts of Jerusalem from the West Bank. Photograph: Enric Marti/AP

For Davies it’s a rewarding subject to teach: “The students feel as if they’re learning something that actually makes them understand what’s going on today. Every day in the newspapers they can see the ripples of the past. And for the teacher, if the students find it fascinating then it’s great to teach.”

So why the lack of take up? For a start, teaching the history of an ongoing conflict is a sensitive topic and some teachers worry it could spark factionalism among their students. Sharon Booth, of Solutions Not Sides, an education programme that brings Israelis and Palestinians into schools, says many teachers are nervous. “Teachers can face very strong emotional responses from students,” she says. “We worked with a teacher from a Jewish background who had quite a few students from leftwing families or a Muslim background who took a more pro-Palestine perspective. He found it difficult to debate the issues when both he and the students were so emotionally involved.”

The Jewish story, the Arab story … and a plan by Mr Davies Read more

This sensitivity seems to be reflected in a lack of willingness from the Department for Education to push the agenda. Mohammed Amin, co-chair of the Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester, is a patron of the Curriculum for Cohesion and was involved in the 2012 submission to the national curriculum review. “One of our key points was that schools should teach the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict,” says Amin, “but the government simply ducked it. They think it’s too controversial.” The DfE disputes this, but it did not put the recommended unit into the curriculum.

Although discord is not to be invited, it could be argued that the more contentious a subject is, the more important it is to teach. “You need to bring up children to understand difficult issues, to be able to cope with arguments and disagreements rather than have a punch-up,” says Amin. “History and the way we see and understand it determines how we see the world. If you talk to British teenage Muslims I think they will tell you how appalling the behaviour of Jews has been in the Middle East, how they stole the Arabs’ land, but there will be zero recognition of the anti-Jewish violence perpetrated by Arabs in the 1920s and 30s or the total Arab unwillingness to talk to the UN fact-finding team that led to the partition plan. Conversely, if you talk to Jewish people there is zero recognition that terrible atrocities were perpetrated by both sides and that Israeli policy became one of expulsion.”

The exam board OCR says that while it has dropped Israel-Palestine from its GCSE syllabus, it now offers it at A-level. However, this narrows the number of those able to study the subject.

At Lancaster Royal Grammar pupils are engaged with the debate much earlier. “Some of it is best pitched at year 9,” says Hugh Castle, head of history, “because a lot of students don’t take history GCSE and these are issues that need to be explored before people hive off into their own subject areas.”

Good teaching materials are crucial, but books are thin on the ground for a subject that few schools opt to teach. This is where Michael Davies’s Parallel Histories project stepped in. Davies recruited five young researchers, gave each a topic, and tasked them with scripting both sides and finding documentary evidence to back it up. Over the past 18 months a suite of side-by-side online teaching materials has been created.

For the young researcher living in a Nablus refugee camp, or the Jewish woman who has organised pro-Israeli activism on campus, or the first-generation Pakistani Muslim who preaches at his local mosque, the process of creating these materials is an education in itself.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Year 10 and year 12 pupils at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar school study Israel-Palestine in extra curricular sessions. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

As one Jewish researcher puts it: “I’ve learned that no one event or spurt of violence in this conflict stands alone. The most disputed question is always ‘what started it?’ because each side seeks a starting point that puts them on the moral high ground. It’s a reminder that the past is a continuous stream which historians sometimes arbitrarily chop up into phases.”

The first videos covering the period 1914 to the mid-1920s are up and running on the Parallel Histories Facebook page. Each contains multiple levels of source material in the form of video clips, photographs, documents and letters. Davies hopes that this innovative way of learning and its free platform on social media will create a buzz so it is being picked up not just by history departments but by citizenship classes and religious studies courses.

“You can choose to look at one side,” says Davies, “but then you’re encouraged to go over the wall and look at it from the other side. When I get the diagnostics back on usage, in 90% of cases people who go in one door go in two doors, so they’re looking at both sides.”

Parallel Histories is now being piloted in two Lancaster schools. At Lancaster Girls’ Grammar the history department offers extracurricular sessions on Israel-Palestine and the students have organised lunchtime pupil-led discussions on the subject. For Castle, this side-by-side approach informs the teaching of every topic: “The days when you said, that’s the history, learn it, are long gone. Students need to form their own views.”

For Mohammed Amin, the benefits of this approach are clear: “It forces people to read the narratives and perspectives of the other side. That in itself is an achievement because most people go through their lives only reading the things they agree with.”