-
Webinar series: Making GCSE history accessible: supporting all learners at Key Stage 4
HA webinar series for history teachers, leaders and SENDCos
What does this series cover and why should I attend?
In recent years, the UK’s SEND system has been under the spotlight. As numbers of students with identified special educational needs increase, attention has been given to how to best embed inclusive practice, enabling teachers to support all students to...
Webinar series: Making GCSE history accessible: supporting all learners at Key Stage 4
-
Subject Co-Ordinators for History
Primary History Leaders
Welcome to the online CPD for Primary History Leaders
On behalf of myself, and the team here at the Historical Association, welcome. This is the start of what we hope will be four very interesting weeks together.
This course is designed to engage you on several levels and is designed...
Subject Co-Ordinators for History
-
Course: Becoming an effective primary history subject leader
Immersive online course for new, experienced and aspiring history leaders
Book Now
(Registration is via Cademy which opens in a new window. Please read the HA CPD terms and conditions before registering)
Autumn 2025 cohort
Start date: Wednesday 15 October 2025, 4pm–5.30pm
What does this course cover?
This is an immersive online course for developing history leadership in primary teaching. It covers the...
Course: Becoming an effective primary history subject leader
-
Talking History competition 2025 – the winners
11th September 2025
Talking History is now into its second year and gathering speed. Following the pattern of The Great Debate but adapted for Years 5 and 6 the competition seeks to encourage young people’s history and oracy skills through a public presentation. Schools are encouraged to enter their pupils into the online...
Talking History competition 2025 – the winners
-
Britain’s forgotten colony? Why Hong Kong deserves a place in the story of empire
Teaching History article
Ollie Barnes encountered Hong Kong history on honeymoon and, powerfully, in the classroom in Nottinghamshire. Historical changes in the former colony’s present had resulted in increasing numbers of Hong Kongers arriving in school. This history demanded attention – important historical changes were in process and pupils needed to understand them....
Britain’s forgotten colony? Why Hong Kong deserves a place in the story of empire
-
Historical scholarship, archaeology and evidence in Year 7
Teaching History article
The stimulus for this article came from two developmental tasks that Barbara Trapani was set during the course of her initial teacher education programme: planning her first historical enquiry and bringing the work of an historian into the classroom. Trapani chose to tackle the two tasks together, using Susan Whitfield’s...
Historical scholarship, archaeology and evidence in Year 7
-
The evolution of surgery
Podcast
In this podcast, Michael Crumplin explores the development of military surgery during the Napoleonic Wars. He provides a brief context of the evolution of surgery and outlines the changes in training, surgical knowledge, militarisation, apparatus and patient experience.
The evolution of surgery
-
Historical and interdisciplinary enquiry into the sinking of the Mary Rose
Teaching History article
The raising of Henry VIII’s warship, the Mary Rose, from the sea bed set in train an extraordinary programme of interdisciplinary research, relentlessly pursuing the clues to Tudor life and death provided by the remains of the ship, its cargo and crew. In this article Clare Barnes offers fascinating insights...
Historical and interdisciplinary enquiry into the sinking of the Mary Rose
-
Move Me On 199: handling differences between history lead's advice and history teachers' approaches
Teaching History feature
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On 199: handling differences between history lead's advice and history teachers' approaches
-
Expertise in its development stage: planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians
Teaching History article
The Director of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY), Deborah Eyre, is one of the foremost advocates of gifted and talented children, and their education, in the UK. She plans to improve the education of the most able students by asking subject communities to work on how...
Expertise in its development stage: planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians
-
Making History
New Website
Making History
Making History, developed by the Institute of Historical Research, is dedicated to the history of the study and practice of history in Britain over the last hundred years and more, following the emergence of the professional discipline in the late 19th century.
Contents
This website contains cross-referenced entries...
Making History
-
Scheme of work: Significant historical events, people and places in their own locality
Primary history scheme of work, Key Stage 1 (unresourced)
Children can be introduced to the idea that schools have been in the locality for some time but they have not always been the same. They can look at similarities and differences, as well as be introduced to some of the events that affected the schools. The theme allows children...
Scheme of work: Significant historical events, people and places in their own locality
-
Raising the profile of history in your school
Primary History article
All too often, with increasing pressure to obtain the ‘best’ results, primary schools allow English and mathematics to steal the limelight, unwittingly pushing other subjects to one side. As a consequence, these ‘other’ subjects are squeezed into vehicles to teach English or maths – barely recognisable under the guise of...
Raising the profile of history in your school
-
Remembering and sharing an enthusiasm for history
Teacher's family honour his memory with a wonderful gift to support the HA Quality Mark
The role that many teachers carry out without realising is as an advocate for their subject, sharing their enthusiasm for learning with children day after day and year after year. The majority of those teachers do not have plaques put up for them or memorials in the town square, but...
Remembering and sharing an enthusiasm for history
-
What makes good primary history?
Transition Training Session 5
This is the 5th in a series of 5 sessions arising from the 2005 KS2-KS3 History Transitions Project:
Transition training session 1: Historical Enquiries & Interpretations
Transition training session 2: Using ICT in the teaching of history
Transition training session 3: Extended writing in history
Transition training session 4: Joan of Arc -...
What makes good primary history?
-
The History around us: Local history
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History is an important aspect of the development of even very young children. They need to begin to develop the foundations of an understanding of the past and how it has developed and affected our present....
The History around us: Local history
-
History Abridged: Operation Black Buck
Historian feature
History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles
Just as the Naval Task Force had been dispatched in April 1982, days after the...
History Abridged: Operation Black Buck
-
Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons
Journal article
Why ‘do’ local history? The new (grades 9–1) GCSE specifications place a lot of importance on the local environment. The rationale for this is to get students to situate a site in its historical context, and to examine the relationship between local and national developments. Initially this change was the...
Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons
-
On-demand webinar: Histories of the African continent
Webinar series: Decolonising the secondary history curriculum
Webinar series: Decolonising the secondary history curriculum
Session 4: Histories of the African continent
This 90-minute recorded webinar will cover three elements: an introductory discussion about the scope and opportunities for exploring African history; Enquiry One: Africa and the development of religion; Enquiry Two: Decolonisation, Ideology and Race in Africa: the struggles...
On-demand webinar: Histories of the African continent
-
History supporting global learning
Primary History article
I am the teaching head of a small village primary school, Hawkshead Esthwaite Primary, in Cumbria. We have, for the last year been one of the first Centres for Excellence for the Global Learning Programme (GLP).The GLP is a Department for International Development (DFID) initiative which began in September 2013...
History supporting global learning
-
Pull-out posters: Primary History 98
Talking History competition
The HA's Primary Oracy Competition: To register interest for 2025, contact Olivia Dent on: olivia.dent@history.org.uk
Find out more here
Pull-out posters: Primary History 98
-
My Favourite History Place and Out & About
Historian regular features
'My Favourite History Place' and 'Out and About' are two of the regular features in The Historian magazine. 'My Favourite History Place' showcases a location of particular historical interest selected by history experts and enthusiasts, and 'Out and About' describes an actual visit to a historical site. All the places that...
My Favourite History Place and Out & About
-
Ideas for assemblies: LGBT History Month
Primary History feature
LGBT History Month was established in 2004. It not only raises awareness of discrimination still faced by the LGBT+ community but also celebrates LGBT+ people and their achievements. February is LGBT History Month and its theme this year was ‘History: Peace, Reconciliation, and Activism’.
Ideas for assemblies: LGBT History Month
-
Popular history: Using the media
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Should we use the media to teach history? Many people who were ‘turned off' history at school have been brought back to it in later life by visits to historic places and especially by television programmes....
Popular history: Using the media
-
TREE-mendous history!
Primary History article
Since the nineteenth century there has been a rich heritage of outdoor learning pedagogy in Europe, and today in Scandinavia the open air culture (frulitsliv) permeates Early Years education. In 1993 Bridgewater College nursery nurses returned from a visit to Denmark enthused by the outdoor educational settings and started their own ‘Forest School'. From 1995 the college...
TREE-mendous history!