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History teacher Samira has struggled to get her GCSE pupils at a boys’ school on the outskirts of London interested in the Tudors.
Instead, they have more pressing questions about the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
“None of my boys care one bit about Henry VIII’s wives,” Samira told The National.
“All of them do want to know how come land was taken away from people.
“Who are the Ottomans? How did Britain just get involved and hand it over to Israel? Why did European Jews end up in the Middle East?”
Samira, who teaches at a Muslim-majority school, is one of the few teachers addressing the conflict’s history, despite growing demand.
“The boys really wanted us to teach it,” she said. “It is part the world they’re living in. Right now, it’s a central part of the news they consume.”
Only 44 schools in the UK taught the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as part of the GCSE curriculum in 2023, despite the UK's historical involvement in Mandatory Palestine and the foundation of Israel.
The history of the conflict from the British withdrawal and creation of Israel in 1948 to the Oslo Accords of 1995 is taught in a GCSE History module by Edexcel, a UK exam body, and is the only one of its kind in the UK.
Yet in 2023, only 1,812 GCSE students registered at exams for the module across 44 schools, Edexcel told The National.
This accounts for 0.5 per cent of GCSE history entries for that year, which were 331,146 according to figures from the Nuffield Foundation.
It also represents less than 2 per cent of state secondary schools (3,061) in the UK excluding Scotland, according to data from the Department of Education.
OCR, another exam board, dropped its GCSE module covering the subject in 2019. It offers it for A-level, to an even smaller pool of history students.
The figures predate the October 7 Hamas attacks, which started the most recent Israel-Gaza war.
But earlier rounds of violence in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank in recent years have led to growing questions from pupils about the conflict and its origins.
Extra-curricular initiatives addressing the conflict and its history have gained traction since October 7, and as the war has raised tension among communities in the UK.
UK educational charity Parallel Histories, which supplies teachers with resources on the conflict that tell the story from the Israeli and Palestinian perspectives, said demand for its material had tripled since that date.
Samira’s school has not taken up the Edexcel GCSE, but it has allowed her to teach the history of the conflict.
Other teachers told The National they had also set up history societies to teach about the hostilities.
Samira feared that not doing so would make children more vulnerable to misinformation on social media. She sensed pupils were giving up on their teachers.
“I had a kid in my class who asked what was happening in Israel and Palestine at the beginning of the conflict,” she said, referring to a different school.
“I told her we’re not talking about this. She said, 'It's OK, I’ll go home and watch it on TikTok.'
“She made me feel so redundant. I was like: my goodness, did you just replace me with TikTok?”
Teaching the conflict in schools is needed to create a safe environment for children to debate, and have any misconceptions or false information corrected, Samira said.
Physics teacher-turned-UK politician Layla Moran said it was difficult for teachers to do so without better resources and support.
“As a former teacher I can understand why this topic could be seen as being trickier to teach than other modules,” Ms Moran told The National.
Ms Moran, an MP with Palestinian heritage, has been campaigning for better understanding between UK communities as tensions have raised during the Israel-Gaza war.
“We have seen increasingly divisive rhetoric around the ongoing conflict in Gaza, with political leaders using events to stoke division amongst our communities at home,” she said.
“But the lack of any knowledge of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict makes having reasoned conversations more difficult.
“It’s more important than ever that teachers are given sufficient support and training to equip them with the confidence they need to choose the GCSE history module and teach the material.”
Samira's pupils were inclined to empathise with the Palestinian story for family or spiritual reasons. She did not see this as a problem.
“You need to articulate the narrative to make a persuasive case,” she said.
“If they do believe in the Palestinian side rather than the Israeli side, they now have proper arguments, instead of sloganeering, which is so easy to do.”
Edexcel’s textbook on the Middle East has not been without controversy. In 2019, publisher Pearson pulled it off the shelves after complaints of bias from British-Jewish organisations.
Then in 2021, a British organisation supporting Palestinian universities said the revised edition had ignored crucial elements of the Palestinian story.
Parallel Histories' founder Michael Davies was commissioned by Edexcel to conduct independent reviews of its material after the complaints.
Latest from the Israel-Gaza war – in pictures
Another obstacle is the government’s counter-terrorism programme, Prevent, which requires head teachers to report any early signs of radicalisation among pupils.
Comments from pupils might be misconstrued and reported, with critics of the programme saying that Muslim children could unfairly become targets.
“That’s puts teachers in a very difficult position with the community of parents that they’re serving,” said Mr Davies.
“There was enough distrust, particularly from the Muslim community in the UK, that you can see why head teachers would be worried about being put in that position.”
Some Muslim teachers had been warning Muslim children that they risked being reported if they spoke about the conflict, Samira said. This furthered the distrust between pupils and their teachers.
“I can see where the teachers are coming from, but what happens is they [are] enforcing a silence that’s so uncomfortable,” she said.
“Children then know that schools and classrooms are not a safe place for them to express solidarity with Palestine, because they might be reported.”
Ghanem Nuseibeh, chairman of the UK charity Muslims Against Anti-Semitism, said teachers need better training to deal with topics such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
“A teacher who wants to take a subject on would need to be extremely sensitive to the students’ responses,” Mr Nuseibeh said.
“I don’t think majority of teachers are trained to deal with such an active conflict, that brings up such high emotions.”
Concerns for a teachers' safety were plausible, he said.
“I fully understand the position of teachers. Particularly now, with social media, there will be an element of concern for their own safety and security from either side.”
But the UK had a “responsibility” to teach about the conflict because of its historical involvement and to prevent misinformation from spreading.
“The UK more than any other nation is morally and historically responsible for what is going on,” Mr Nuseibeh said.
“A lot of disinformation is spreading across communities. If you don’t teach it at schools, people will get their information from other sources. It’s important for facts to be established.”
A representative of the Department for Education said: “It is important that children are taught about global events and schools offer this opportunity in a safe and controlled environment.
“We know navigating the conflict can be challenging for teachers, and this is why the Education Secretary wrote to schools to provide advice on how to discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict in the classroom.
“We have also published resources and lesson plans on our Educate Against Hate website to complement existing guidance on impartiality.”
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Notable salonnières of the Middle East through history
Al Khasan (Okaz, Saudi Arabia)
Tamadir bint Amr Al Harith, known simply as Al Khasan, was a poet from Najd famed for elegies, earning great renown for the eulogy of her brothers Mu’awiyah and Sakhr, both killed in tribal wars. Although not a salonnière, this prestigious 7th century poet fostered a culture of literary criticism and could be found standing in the souq of Okaz and reciting her poetry, publicly pronouncing her views and inviting others to join in the debate on scholarship. She later converted to Islam.
Maryana Marrash (Aleppo)
A poet and writer, Marrash helped revive the tradition of the salon and was an active part of the Nadha movement, or Arab Renaissance. Born to an established family in Aleppo in Ottoman Syria in 1848, Marrash was educated at missionary schools in Aleppo and Beirut at a time when many women did not receive an education. After touring Europe, she began to host salons where writers played chess and cards, competed in the art of poetry, and discussed literature and politics. An accomplished singer and canon player, music and dancing were a part of these evenings.
Princess Nazil Fadil (Cairo)
Princess Nazil Fadil gathered religious, literary and political elite together at her Cairo palace, although she stopped short of inviting women. The princess, a niece of Khedive Ismail, believed that Egypt’s situation could only be solved through education and she donated her own property to help fund the first modern Egyptian University in Cairo.
Mayy Ziyadah (Cairo)
Ziyadah was the first to entertain both men and women at her Cairo salon, founded in 1913. The writer, poet, public speaker and critic, her writing explored language, religious identity, language, nationalism and hierarchy. Born in Nazareth, Palestine, to a Lebanese father and Palestinian mother, her salon was open to different social classes and earned comparisons with souq of where Al Khansa herself once recited.
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