“Lord Cromer was a successful consul-general of Egypt. To what extent do you agree?” I read this essay prompt in my A-level history class, wondering what “successful” means. Successful in forcing austerity on Egyptians to line the pockets of British financiers? Successful in civilising a country of people he viewed as “subversive demagogues” and “subject races”?

Thankfully my essay could argue that Cromer wasn’t successful if I tried to frame “success” in terms of how he impacted the Egyptian population: he imposed an unfair land tax system and restricted access to education. But even then I had to write it under the implicit assumption that colonial rulers can be successful for a population – it’s just that this one wasn’t. Why doesn’t discussion around Cromer – and the values he embodied – instead centre on the right to rule?

Like many students at British secondary schools, I have scores of kings and queens and specific weapon limitations of cold war treaties etched into my memory from GCSE and prior. That’s not a complaint – all history is valuable. But there is so much history that is just as, or probably more significant, yet absent from our curricula. And as the Cromer essay prompt highlights, there’s another issue. When British colonial history is studied, what is scrutinised and critiqued is not the principle of colonialism, but the efficiency with which the British colonised.

At a fundamental level, history means investigating the past, piecing together what we know to form the most accurate version. That means examining varying experiences, perspectives and interpretations; challenging orthodox teachings. The form of colonial history we currently learn in English and Welsh schools is not that. Our curricula sing tales of “great men” but are silent about the colonised. Twelve years after Michael Gove’s tenure as education secretary, we are still memorising the feats of imperial “heroes” rather than reading colonial history from reflective and inclusive perspectives – such as the perspectives of its victims.

Take, for example, my Edexcel module Britain: losing and gaining an empire, 1763-1914. When we A-level students learn about the 1857 Indian uprising, we study the “strengths” and “weaknesses” of British governor generals. Yet their role in orchestrating the 1770 great Bengal famine – killing 10 million people – is somehow absent from the specification.

Why do our history curricula still project selective amnesia? Fear of diminishing British identity? Perhaps – but if this fear exists, it is a delusion. Just look at how Germany reckons with its difficult past. Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“a working-off of the past”) has only strengthened the country. Just walk through Berlin and you’ll find plaques, memorials and museums full of meaningful commemorations of the Holocaust that have made the country stronger by creating genuine awareness of historical crimes.

From the Balfour declaration to the great Irish famine, the legacies of British colonialism still reverberate across the world. Former colonies know far more of – and look far more critically on – our shared history than we do in Britain, as reactions to the queen’s death in 2022 across the Commonwealth highlighted. As David Olusoga puts it, British history has “always been a dialogue”, even though many people in Britain treat it as a monologue. But this amnesia doesn’t strengthen or protect British identity: it divides us. It excludes and erases the populations that have always been the silenced part of the dialogue. And not just on a global scale – in the classroom too, where many students are descended from the very history their textbooks ignore.

It might be difficult to teach the British empire. It might be uncomfortable to shift focus from its “successes” to its human costs. There would surely be objection from the imperial nostalgists. But these are not good excuses for teaching ignorance.

The late scholar-activist Ambalavaner Sivanandan said of post-colonial migration: “We are here because you were there.” I was never taught this simple fact at school. Reading books and listening to podcasts in my free time have educated me about this subject, not the national curriculum. There are optional GCSE modules on migration and empire, but only 4% of GCSE history students take them. And A-level empire modules, like my own, remain deeply flawed. This leaves history teachers in a moral dilemma. Choose the uncommon GCSE modules and accept that resources may be less reliable. Teach beyond the narrow A-level empire specification and risk hindering students’ exam performances – not to mention the additional workload at a time when teachers have never been so overworked.

In effect we have a system that seems engineered to prevent proper teaching of the British empire. This should alarm us all. Why? Because the far right gains from our ignorance. Anti-immigration populism succeeds because we know so little of our history. The claim that Britain is being “colonised” by migrant “invasions” is popular because we are not taught what colonisation actually looks like. The demonisation of migrants works because few are taught about the vital, positive role that migration to Britain has played throughout history.

But the classroom could be a place where we prevent the growth of these narratives. Teach students colonial history – that migration is not some random, inexplicable phenomenon – and arm us with the intellect to do so.

When I take my history A-levels in June, I can expect to write an essay focusing, absurdly, on the “successes” of some Victorian imperialist like Cromer instead of on the larger questions about empire. My only hope is that future history students will not. With the recent curriculum review recommending a shake-up of what is taught in schools, now is the time for a long overdue change. Critical colonial history is urgently necessary – politically, socially and morally.

• Astrid Barltrop is the winner of the The Guardian Foundation’s 2026 Emerging Voices award (16-18 category) and a year 13 student

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