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Primary history through the secondary school lens
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
Trying to explain what pupils at primary school should know and understand about history to help their progress at secondary school is an extremely tricky question to answer (so thanks Jon!). Ultimately there are...
Primary history through the secondary school lens
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The First Crusade, 1095–99
Historian feature
As Christianity had spread across Europe, Islam had spread across the Middle East. At the end of the eleventh century the relationship between the Muslim leader of Jerusalem and the Christian communities and travellers to the city fractured. Along with other key relationships across Europe, the Middle East and around...
The First Crusade, 1095–99
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Significant people: Mary Wollstonecraft
Primary History article
‘I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves’ – Mary Wollstonecraft
The National Curriculum gives the freedom to select any significant individual and many schools have already chosen those outside the commonly-used ones such as Florence Nightingale, Christopher Columbus and Queen Victoria. There is also...
Significant people: Mary Wollstonecraft
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Teaching History 89
The HA's journal for history teachers
4 Editorial
5 Teaching History Briefing
9 'I can't remember doing Romans' by Elizabeth Wood and Cathie Holden
13 Colonies, colonials and World War II by Marika Sherwood
19 Does GCSE provide a valid assessment of the achievements of the more able? by Elizabeth Pickles
22 Time for history by...
Teaching History 89
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HA Survey of English Secondary Schools
Survey
History Faces Extinction in English Schools
Pupils are receiving fewer and fewer hours of history teaching across secondary schools in England according to research by the Historical Association. The specially commissioned report discovered that:
Many children receive little or no history education after only two years of secondary school
48%...
HA Survey of English Secondary Schools
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Webinar series: Deep dive with confidence
HA webinar series for current and aspiring primary history subject leaders
"This series was very useful in preparing for Ofsted and ensuring I was considering the curriculum outcomes sufficiently."
What does this series cover?
We are pleased to offer teachers another chance to access this series of webinars which will address the implications of the 2023 Ofsted subject report for primary...
Webinar series: Deep dive with confidence
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Join our Speakers List
Speak to our Branches
The Historical Association was founded in 1906 with the intention of supporting everyone interested in the study and teaching of history. Today it has around 45 branches throughout the UK, and over 10,000 individual, corporate and associate members.
Each of the HA branches organises a programme of talks and events each year,...
Join our Speakers List
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Polychronicon 150: Interpreting the French Revolution
Teaching History feature
For most of the last two centuries, historical interpretations of the French Revolution have focused on its place in a grand narrative of modernity. For the most ‘counter-revolutionary' writers, the Revolution showed why modernity was to be resisted - destroying traditional institutions and disrupting all that was valuable in an...
Polychronicon 150: Interpreting the French Revolution
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History and the early years: A view from the classroom
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History gives colour and vitality to the curriculum. There are just so many engaging things to do. Without history there wouldn't be so much fun; whether in handling objects such as: the old wooden toys,...
History and the early years: A view from the classroom
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Primary history and the curriculum: a South African perspective
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The issues surrounding the construction of a post-conflict history curriculum are complex. At its most basic level, the memory choice for a country emerging from mass violence is between remembering and forgetting, with...
Primary history and the curriculum: a South African perspective
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Recorded webinar: Maya ruler King Pakal II of Palenque
‘A veritable Tutankhamun of the New World’
The discovery in 1952 of the tomb of King Pakal II of Palenque has been called the most important archaeological find in the history of the Americas. Protected by a magnificently sculpted stone sarcophagus depicting Pakal’s descent to the underworld and re-birth as the maize god lay the body of...
Recorded webinar: Maya ruler King Pakal II of Palenque
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From The Holocaust To Recent Mass Murders And Refugees
IJHLTR Article
International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 14, Number 2 – Spring/Summer 2017ISSN: 14472-9474
Abstract
Through studying cases of genocide and mass atrocities, students can come to realize that: democratic institutions and values are not automatically sustained but need to be appreciated, nurtured, and protected; silence and indifference to the...
From The Holocaust To Recent Mass Murders And Refugees
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Leading Primary History Guidebook 2006
Guidebook for History Co-ordinators
Please note: this publication refers to the pre-2014 National Curriculum, but some content is still relevant. For current and recent content see our Subject leaders section.
Contents
Leading primary history: The Foundation Stage
Key Stage 1
Citizenship in the Primary Years
Learning and Teaching about the past in the foundation stage
Learning...
Leading Primary History Guidebook 2006
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Personality & Power: The individual's role in the history of twentieth-century Europe
Article
What role do individuals wielding great power play in determining significant historical change? And how do historians locate human agency in historical change, and explain it? These are the issues I would like to reflect a little upon here. They are not new problems. But they are inescapable ones for...
Personality & Power: The individual's role in the history of twentieth-century Europe
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Vera Ignatievna Giedroyc: her missions of mercy, 1899–1932
Historian article
Historical research takes place in many forms and in many locations. This research, which has been translated for us, introduces us to an heroic pioneering Ukrainian woman surgeon.
During the Spring of 1932 in the Ukrainian city of Kiev, on a sunny day in March, a very small group of...
Vera Ignatievna Giedroyc: her missions of mercy, 1899–1932
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New, Novice or Nervous? 165: Enabling progress - students who need more support
Teaching History feature
Students often find history ‘hard’; senior managers and pastoral managers perceive it as challenging and many, with the best of intentions, steer students away from taking it for GCSE. Indeed, in the most recent HA survey, 49% of respondents reported that some students are actively discouraged or prevented from continuing...
New, Novice or Nervous? 165: Enabling progress - students who need more support
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The Historian 154: Jubilee
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial (Read article for free)
6 (Un)exceptional women: queenship and power in medieval Europe – Gabrielle ‘Gabby’ Storey (Read article)
10 Dress becomes her: the appearance and apparel of Elizabeth II – Benjamin Linley Wild (Read article)
15 Reviews
16 The throne and the fairy tellers –...
The Historian 154: Jubilee
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Teaching and learning through personal, family and local history
E-CPD
N.B. This unit was produced before the 2014 curriculum and therefore while much of the advice is still useful, there may be some out of date references or links.
This unit is concerned with the way that primary age pupils can make use of their own personal, family and local history...
Teaching and learning through personal, family and local history
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The Historian 149: Pandemics
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial (Read article for free)
6 Florence Nightingale and epidemics – Richard Bates (Read article)
11 Real Lives: Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial in Hints churchyard: Edward George Keeling – Trevor James (Read article)
12 The experience of Bilston in the cholera epidemic of 1831–32: a melancholy pre-eminence in...
The Historian 149: Pandemics
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Year 9 - Connecting past, present and future
Teaching History article
Possible futures: using frameworks of knowledge to help Year 9 connect past, present and future
How can we help pupils integrate history into coherent ‘Big Pictures' or mental frameworks? Building on traditions of classroom research and theorising reported in earlier editions of Teaching History, Dan Nuttall reports how his department set...
Year 9 - Connecting past, present and future
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Using the present to construct a meaningful picture of the medieval past
Teaching History article
In this article, Jessica Phillips returns to a theme explored in the Historical Association’s publication Exploring and Teaching Medieval History in Schools – the challenge of teaching about the medieval past in ways that acknowledge its vibrant complexity and create a genuine sense of resonance rather than condescension or blank...
Using the present to construct a meaningful picture of the medieval past
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Limited lessons from the Holocaust?
Teaching History article
Limited lessons from the Holocaust? Critically considering the ‘anti-racist' and citizenship potential
Previous issues of Teaching History have seen extensive debate about the appropriateness of approaching Holocaust education with explicitly social or moral - as opposed to historical - aims. Rather than taking sides, Alice Pettigrew first acknowledges the range...
Limited lessons from the Holocaust?
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Primary History 2
The primary education journal of the Historical Association
5 Back to Worrying – Paul Noble
5 History Update – NCC and SEAC
6 In My Opinion – Pat Hughes
7 Evacuation Day – Dave Martin and Andy Cobb
9 Televising the Tudors and Stuarts – Nick Whines
10 Conference Report – Sue Lynn
11 Hands on Experience –...
Primary History 2
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The Norman Conquest: why did it matter?
Annual Conference 2013 Podcast
Keynote Speech from the Historical Association 2013 Annual Conference - Podcast
Dr Marc Morris - Historian, author and television presenter
1066 is the most famous date in English history. Everyone remembers the story, depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry, of William the Conqueror's successful invasion, and poor King Harold being felled...
The Norman Conquest: why did it matter?
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'...trying to count the stars': using the story of Bergen-Belsen to teach the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Maria Osowiecki's search for the right questions to frame her students' study of the Holocaust was driven initially by the proximity of her school to the site of Bergen-Belsen, and the particular interests and concerns of her students as members of British Forces families. But, as this article richly demonstrates,...
'...trying to count the stars': using the story of Bergen-Belsen to teach the Holocaust
