'Children should study history until 16'

Children would be forced to study history until the age of 16 under new Tory plans.

The party claims young people have such a woeful lack of knowledge about Britain's past they should not be allowed to drop the subject and an understanding of key dates and British heroes would restore respect for the nation's heritage.

But the party risks coming under attack for undermining the subject in the first place. It was a Tory government which originally ruled that pupils could drop history at 14.

The new policy will be announced by shadow education secretary Tim Collins. It follows research exposing huge gaps in children's knowledge. Last year, a survey revealed that one in 10 Britons think Adolf Hitler was not a real person. One in seven did not know whether the Battle of Hastings was fact or fiction, while one in five thought Harold Wilson was prime minister during the Second World War.

In another survey, nearly a third of 11- to 18-year-olds thought that Oliver Cromwell fought at Hastings.

In a speech today, Mr Collins was labelling the scale of ignorance about British history a "farce" and "outright scandal". He said: " Nothing is more important to the survival of the British nation than an understanding among its young of our shared heritage and the nature of the struggles, foreign and domestic, which have secured our freedoms. A nation which loses sight of its past cannot long expect to enjoy its future."

Two thirds of pupils drop history at 14 and the Conservatives believe that too little time is devoted to the subject in the early years of secondary school.