Secondary programme
The HA Conference is a unique opportunity to join the history teaching community on a weekend of supportive and subject-specific professional learning and development. In the Secondary pathway you can attend workshops from fellow history teachers, expert consultants and academic historians covering a wide range of topics and issues from Key Stages 3-5. Explore practical strategies to support all students, develop your conceptual and curriculum thinking, and much more.
Where a session has been identified by the presenter(s) as suitable for multiple key stages, particular areas of focus are indicated in bold.
Beyond Tudor queens and suffragettes: ESIS strategies for reclaiming women’s place in history
Sasha Smith
Priory Lincoln Academy; End Sexism in Schools
Drawing on The Great History Heist, End Sexism in Schools’ national study into gender bias in Key Stage 3 history, this session focuses on what teachers and departments can do now with their existing curriculum to recapture the voices of women who were always there. The 2025 ESIS report revealed that at Key Stage 3, 59% of lessons included no mention of women at all, and only 5% of schools taught a single named woman in each period of the National Curriculum. The report calls for institutional change and highlights how teachers can begin these changes now.
Learning outcomes:
Participants will gain a clear understanding of the report’s key findings and explore realistic strategies for weaving women into existing enquiries. They will leave with specific examples and freely available resources to support curriculum development. By the end, teachers will feel confident to create a more representative, academically rigorous and complete history curriculum.
Friday, Session 1: 10:45–11:45
Suitable for: Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, early career teacher, trainee teacher, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
Making history matter: linking local history to national and international stories
Emmy Quinn
Newminster Middle School, Morpeth
This session will examine how using local history can show students that their history matters and make them feel more connected to national and international history. Using examples from Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3, Emmy will explore how local history from the North East can be connected to wider histories through both specific units of study and being weaved into other units. She will include how to best find examples from local history using archives, museums, local sites and research, and how to use these in lessons.
Learning outcomes:
- Delegates will come away with practical ideas for including more local history in the curriculum.
- Delegates will explore how to build units of study around local history.
- The session will provide examples of how this has been done in Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3, linking together local, national and global stories.
Friday, Session 1: 10:45–11:45
Suitable for: Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 | history subject leader, classroom teacher, early career teacher, teacher educator/mentor
Teaching migration histories with confidence at Key Stage 3
Helen Ward
British Library
Liberty Melly
Migration Museum
Abdul Mohamud
UCL Institute of Education, London
Join the learning teams from the British Library and Migration Museum, along with UCL teacher educator Abdul Mohamud, for a practical session exploring how to integrate migration into your Key Stage 3 curriculum. We will share new classroom resources, based on primary sources from the British Library collections, and consider how these might be used to offer rich learning activities for students that facilitate understanding of who we are and help to develop critical thinking skills. We will also share a toolkit that we have developed to address issues that history teachers might face when engaging with these themes, offering practical guidance as well as an opportunity to discuss applying these to your own teaching context.
Learning outcomes:
You will gain confidence in how to address challenging topics, creating healthy dialogue and an inclusive learning environment for your students.
Friday, Session 1: 10:45–11:45
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, teacher educator/mentor
Voices that shape understanding: using oracy in the history classroom
Sally Burnham
Carre’s Grammar School, Sleaford
This practical workshop explores how and why subject-specific historical talk in the classroom can strengthen students’ thinking, prepare them for extended writing and deepen their engagement with oral history. Listening, speaking, reading and writing all contribute to the creation of historical knowledge. In this session, we will examine ways to create purposeful space for thinking, low-stakes oral rehearsal, engagement with enquiry questions, debate and critical discussion. We will also explore approaches for integrating spoken history into the curriculum, including opportunities to work with published oral histories and to develop students’ own oral history projects connected to their local communities.
Learning outcomes:
Participants will have the opportunity to consider a range of strategies that build on existing departmental practice and reflect on how whole-school oracy approaches can be shaped to support the teaching and learning of history.
Friday, Session 1: 10:45–11:45
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader, trainee teacher
Making GCSE history accessible for LPAs across a multi-academy trust (the journey so far)
Katie Amery
Co-op Academies, Manchester
This session will explore the practical and strategic journey of improving GCSE history accessibility and outcomes for low prior attainers across a multi-academy trust. Drawing on two years of trust-wide collaboration, curriculum refinement and targeted CPD, it outlines how a coherent approach and adaptive teaching can raise attainment without diluting rigour and individual academy autonomy. Participants will gain insight into the trust’s evolving model for supporting lower attainers and be invited to reflect on how collaborative, research-informed practice can help all pupils to engage meaningfully with the discipline of history.
Learning outcomes:
Participants will leave with an understanding of:
- practical strategies to raise attainment for LPAs.
- how to use trust-wide data to identify barriers to success and inform responsive interventions.
- how to support teachers through asynchronous and face-to-face CPD.
- shared resources and assessment models that enable consistency while allowing for local flexibility.
Friday, Session 1: 10:45–11:45
Suitable for: Key Stage 4|history subject leader, senior leader
(Some) Hot topics in history teaching
Carmel Bones
Consultant, Carlisle
History teachers are often found running to stand still. This will be a multi-part session exploring and offering bite-sized solutions to some ‘hot topics’ in history teaching, in part linked to the Curriculum and Assessment Review report. The aim is to distil some expert wisdom on environmental history, women in the curriculum, use of stories, planning enquiries and opportunities for financial literacy, providing food for thought and pointers for classroom practice. If time permits, bring your own ‘hot topic’ along and we’ll try to help you to tackle it.
Learning outcomes:
- Gain up-to-date knowledge of some current debates in history teaching.
- Come away with ideas for how to incorporate these ‘hot topics’ into curriculum planning.
- Learn ways in which to include these in lessons.
Friday, Session 1: 10:45–11:45
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor 4
The beats and the buzzing: harnessing the power of reading aloud in an inclusive history classroom
Elizabeth Carr
Avanti Grange Secondary School, Bishop’s Stortford
Catherine Priggs
Consultant, Hertfordshire
This session will explore how reading texts aloud in the history classroom can be transformative for meaning and accessibility. Drawing on research evidence and our own classroom experience in inclusive comprehensive settings, we will unpick specific techniques that teachers can use to harness the power of prosody most effectively with different kinds of text and for different purposes. The session will consider text types ranging from narrative texts, primary sources and historical scholarship to historical fiction.
Learning outcomes:
Participants will gain a deeper understanding of the rationale for reading texts aloud to pupils in the classroom. They will take away practical methods for using text in a way that supports access and inclusion, and greater confidence in implementing this approach.
Friday, Session 1: 10:45–11:45
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
Teaching difficult and inclusive histories: learning from Indigenous voices and perspectives
Kerry Apps
Open University, Milton Keynes
Caroline Dodds Pennock
University of Sheffield
Catherine Flavelle
Blundell’s School, Tiverton
This session is designed to help teachers to develop the confidence and skills with which to address challenges in teaching Indigenous American and other marginalised histories in UK classrooms. Through the examples of ‘Indigenous Tudors’ and the legacy of First Nations residential schools, this workshop will provide practical resources and hands-on advice in the creation of critically informed classroom experiences and enquiries. Teachers will also be introduced to opportunities offered by the work, resources and support of the Teaching Indigenous Histories and Perspectives in Schools Project (TIHPS), a collaboration between Indigenous partners, scholars and teachers.
Learning outcomes:
- Participants will understand the connections between British and Indigenous American histories and identify opportunities to include Indigenous perspectives in UK history classrooms.
- Participants will develop practical strategies and confidence in teaching Indigenous and inclusive histories and perspectives effectively.
- Participants will explore how the teaching of Indigenous histories can develop historical thinking and understandings of concepts such as empire, inclusion and identity.
Friday, Session 2: 12:00–13:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
When worlds collide: maximising curriculum time through cross-curricular enquiries
Sally Thorne
Montpelier High School, Bristol
Inspired by the national conferences of both the Geographical Association and the Historical Association, Sally had been working with her head of geography colleague, Natalie, to develop a scheme of work for Year 7 that draws together the golden threads of the humanities subjects for their Year 7 group. Taking their cue from Anjana Khatwa’s GA conference lecture in 2025, this enquiry delves into the geological processes involved in the formation of Hawaii, the stories told by Indigenous peoples about the islands and the impact of colonisation and decolonisation. Sally will also share an outline of their latest enquiry, inspired by Michael Riley’s HA presentation on environmental history: this enquiry examines the Industrial Revolution and its ongoing impact on our population and environment.
Learning outcomes:
Come along for an opportunity to discuss these schemes of work and how you can work collaboratively with other humanities colleagues in your schools.
Friday, Session 2: 12:00–13:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, early career teacher, trainee teacher
How to stop knowledge-rich becoming information-rich: why story matters so much in history
Rachel Foster
University of Cambridge, Cambridge
‘Knowledge-rich’ can easily tip into ‘information-rich’ when knowledge is treated as if it were just content. An information-rich curriculum is a chronicle, not history. An information-rich curriculum does not create inclusion; it damages it. But knowledge is not just ‘content’. Knowledge has shape and meaning. Knowledge can be contested and revised. Knowledge has a form. And the form that historical knowledge most often takes? Story. In this workshop, we will look at how story can help to guard against an information-rich curriculum and pedagogy. In doing so, we will use story as a lens through which to understand history as both a body and a form of knowledge, along with its power to make history more engaging, more meaningful and more inclusive.
Learning outcomes:
Through practical examples, we will consider how, in strong knowledge-rich practice, an understanding of story shapes planning at all scales – long-term curriculum planning, enquiry planning and lesson planning.
Friday, Session 2: 12:00–13:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | history subject leader, senior leader
‘They’ll never be able to do that’
Alex Fairlamb
Kings Priory School, Newcastle upon Tyne
How often have we heard the phrases ‘they’ll never be able to do that’ or ‘some students shouldn’t take history as it’s too hard for them’? This session will challenge those attitudes and misconceptions and demand that we have high expectations of all students, explaining why we should ensure that all students are encouraged to study history as well as experience success when learning about the past. Noting the challenges that exist in the classroom in supporting low prior attainers and students with barriers, during the session we will discuss a range of history scaffolding strategies, including research, implementation ideas and the pitfalls of which to be mindful. Delegates will leave with a range of practical strategies, rooted in examples from multiple key stages.
Learning outcomes:
Delegates will understand how to use scaffolding to teach to the top and support all learners to succeed in the history classroom.
Friday, Session 2: 12:00–13:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
Neurodiversity and history: exploring autism in the past and in the classroom
Mark Fowle
Rugby School
This interactive workshop introduces history teachers to approaches for integrating neurodiversity into historical learning. Beginning with a concise history of autism – from early medical definitions to modern understandings – it considers how teachers can identify and discuss autistic experiences in the past with sensitivity and evidence-awareness. Participants will explore practical strategies for teaching about possible autistic figures in history and for adapting historical learning to engage autistic students. Activities will model inclusive pedagogy that values diverse ways of thinking, communicating and analysing the past.
Learning outcomes:
- Participants will understand key developments in the history of autism.
- Participants will develop strategies for teaching about autistic individuals and narratives.
- Participants will apply inclusive methods to support autistic learners in history classrooms.
- Participants will reflect on how neurodiversity enriches historical enquiry and interpretation.
Friday, Session 2: 12:00–13:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader
Beyond ‘rebirth’ and ‘Nakba’: interpreting events leading to the foundation of Israel in 1948
Rob Kanter
Manchester Metropolitan University
Following my ‘conference-style’ 2025 session on the Peel plan to ‘partition’ Israel/Palestine in 1937, this session will investigate the highly charged narratives surrounding the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. This session will explore the historical context to the events of 1948, including the impact of World War II and the Holocaust and the actions/policies of the British Mandatory Power in Palestine. The remainder of the session will explore how utilising a carefully selected range of eyewitness testimony and a range of historical scholarship can help young people to make sense of contentious and emotive interpretations. We will consider experiential approaches that foster broad and open dialogue between students, while helping them to move beyond potentially divisive polemics.
Learning outcomes:
- Participants will leave with increased subject knowledge on the events leading up to Israel’s foundation in 1948.
- Delegates will hear a wide range of Arab and Jewish interpretations.
- Participants will come away with strategies for dialogue and going beyond polemic.
Friday, Session 2: 12:00–13:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, teacher educator/mentor, history subject leader
Sourcing crime in Whitechapel and medicine on the Western Front: how best to use sources at a historic environment
Alana Britton
NST; Beechwood School, Tunbridge Wells
This session will make the most of the historical site visit for GCSE history by examining sources. The focus will be on crime and punishment in Whitechapel and medicine on the Western Front as case studies, linking sources to the sites, assessing the reliability of the sources and considering how to follow up an enquiry using sources. This should allow students to understand the key features of the site, along with gaining a greater understanding of specific source analysis. The session will also provide source packets for other historic sites.
Friday, Session 2: 12:00–13:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 4, especially those teaching ‘Crime and punishment’ or ‘Medicine’
There’s a castle in Newcastle? How local history is reshaping students’ perceptions of their world
Jacob Billingsley
Jarrow School, South Tyneside
This session will focus on how to develop a thread of local history throughout the Key Stage 3 curriculum, as well as at GCSE, and how to take advantage of the vast well of knowledge that can support us in this quest. It will touch upon how we have tried to represent, in a balanced way, local communities in all their diversity, and how you could do this too.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will gain an insight into the broader planning that has helped us to awaken students to the history that is all around them (and beneath their feet).
- Participants will pick up practical tips on how to engage with local history, sites and academics.
- Participants will reflect on how integrating local history can enhance pupils’ sense of identity, place and historical perspective.
Friday, Session 3: 14:00–15:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, trainee teacher, early career teacher
Exploring the ‘Invisible East’: uncovering everyday life in the medieval Eastern Islamicate world
Zaiba Patel
University of Oxford
This workshop introduces teachers to the University of Oxford’s Invisible East project, which translates and analyses documents from the medieval Islamicate world. These sources reveal everyday life for people across social strata, including women, and the rich interfaith coexistence of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and others. Drawing on a tried-and-tested Key Stage 3 workshop delivered to over 400 students in schools across England and Afghanistan, participants will explore how to embed rigorous source-based enquiry, diversify narratives of the medieval Islamicate world and adopt a decolonial pedagogical approach. In this workshop, we will bring together two themes that are currently generating lots of debate among history teachers – how to cultivate pupils' sense of place and how to use and tell stories well in the history classroom – by exploring how and why we might tell stories about cities. What does it mean to tell the story of a city? What might be the curricular value of such stories? What are the challenges of trying to build stories around a place, and how might we do so?
Learning outcomes:
- Participants will engage with a range of historical sources from the region to deepen knowledge and understanding of the medieval Islamicate world.
- Participants will explore the ethical dilemmas faced by Invisible East historians and find ways in which to engage young people in these debates.
- Participants will develop strategies to teach histories often underrepresented in the classroom, including women’s lives and the coexistence of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and other religious groups.
Friday, Session 3: 14:00–15:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader
Similar and different: how historical sources can reveal colonised experiences of the British Empire
Emma McKenna
The King's School, Grantham
Helen Ward
British Library
Robin Whitburn
UCL Institute of Education, London
Following their successful collaboration on an HA Teacher Fellowship, Emma, Helen and Robin build on their work to encourage teachers to explore colonised experiences of the British Empire. The session will share ideas about how to embed British Empire history by drawing on historical sources from the British Library collections that span India, Africa, Australia, North America and the Caribbean. We will share ideas for using these sources for standalone tasks that might slot into existing enquiries, and offer suggestions for a similarity and difference enquiry. Participants will also have an opportunity to work with the sources and consider potential tasks. Finally, we will share feedback from Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 5 students, reflecting on how it has developed their understanding of the British Empire, as well as their ability to work with historical source material.
Learning outcomes:
- Participants will learn teaching approaches to make British Empire history accessible and flexible.
- Participants will come away with strategies for using historical sources.
Friday, Session 3: 14:00–15:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, teacher educator/mentor
The Collier’s Rant: what songs should be sung of Britain’s coal mining communities?
Morgan Robinson
The University of Sheffield
Colliers and their families made Britain, and many of its communities and their identities exist in the shadow of the industry that once defined them. Yet the historical significance of coal mining and its legacy are often contested, divisive or ignored. This session taps into the rich seam of folk songs sung of and by miners and mining communities, to empower pupils to decide for themselves how these histories and legacies should be understood. This historical enquiry asks pupils to curate a selection of songs from across a range of themes, time and place. By what they include and omit, pupils can judge how the history of coal mining should be remembered and understood.
Learning outcomes:
Participants will leave with an adaptable enquiry structure and a range of materials to support pupils to curate a representative selection of songs from across the UK and/or bespoke to their school’s more local context.
Friday, Session 3: 14:00–15:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, post-16 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
Making the abstract concrete: teaching ‘The People’s Health’ through place
Jonathon Bradley
Cardinal Allen Catholic High School, Fleetwood
This session shares an innovative approach to teaching the thematic ‘The People’s Health’ unit through focusing on specific locations to understand each period. It explores how anchoring each period of The People’s Health in a specific location can make broad themes tangible and memorable for students. By tracing public health through Bristol’s medieval streets, Manchester’s cholera-ridden alleys or the smog and estates of the East End, pupils connect national change to lived experience.
Learning outcomes:
The session will share classroom examples, enquiry sequences and student outcomes that show how using place deepens understanding of continuity and change, supports disciplinary thinking and helps students to see the ‘big story’ of public health through the everyday realities of people and place.
Friday, Session 3: 14:00–15:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 4 | classroom teacher, history subject leader
Teaching students to think historically in the age of generative AI
Martin Lindill
John Hampden Grammar School, High Wycombe; Oxford University, Department for Education
This session shares interim findings from an Oxford-based MSc study exploring how generative AI can strengthen post-16 students’ disciplinary thinking in history. Drawing on data from a collaborative workshop, experimental schemes of work and teacher/student reflections, it demonstrates how AI tools can act as structured mediators for key elements of historical reasoning (analysing evidence, forming arguments and refining written expression). Examples include coursework planning with ChatGPT, dialogue-based source evaluation through NotebookLM and causal reasoning prompts supported by Gemini. These classroom models inform a collaborative and integrated approach to AI, positioning it as a scaffold for disciplined enquiry rather than as a shortcut to producing written content.
Learning outcomes:
- Participants will develop confidence in using generative AI tools (ChatGPT, NotebookLM) to enhance students’ historical thinking and writing.
- The session will explore classroom-tested approaches for integrating AI ethically and effectively into secondary history teaching.
- We will reflect on how AI can support students’ reasoning, argumentation and disciplinary writing as interconnected processes.
Friday, Session 3: 14:00–15:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, early career teacher, trainee teacher, history subject leader, senior leader
Pearson Edexcel history: one step closer towards history qualification reform
Mark Battye
Subject Advisor for History and Politics, Pearson Edexcel
This workshop will provide delegates with the opportunity to discuss qualification reform. Now that the Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report has been published, the session will recap the latest information about reform, sharing what we know about proposed changes and how they will take shape, and providing an opportunity for teachers to share their thoughts on what they would like to see in reformed GCSE and A-level history qualifications.
Friday, Session 3: 14:00–15:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 4
Capturing the flag: tackling the controversial events of today through the lens of history
Philip Arkinstall
University of Gloucestershire
Flags have represented nations, ideas, revolts, fear and rebellion, and evoked controversy in recent times. As history teachers, we want to engage our pupils with the past but make it relevant to the world in front of them. What if present events are beginning to compound misconceptions and fuel a warping of our history? This workshop will focus on the challenge of mediating student debate on issues like Union flags appearing on our streets, and aims to share practical, engaging resources to empower teachers to use the concept of power and protest to understand the events of today. Through a short scheme of work on protest and revolution, which can fit into an existing curriculum, we will look at ways of teaching history that reflect opportunities to explore current political events.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will enhance their subject knowledge of protests surrounding events like the American Wars of Independence.
- Participants will gain practical teaching ideas surrounding how to approach ‘difficult’ conversations in the history classroom.
- Participants will leave with access to a set of resources that can be taken away and embedded within curriculums.
- Participants will gain confidence in approaching ‘difficult’ histories.
Friday, Session 4: 15:15–16:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | history subject leader, classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, senior leader
Bayeux and beyond: embedding more women in the teaching of Anglo-Norman England
Natasha Hodgson
Nottingham Trent University
Most schools teach the Norman Conquest at Key Stage 3, and some at GCSE and A-level, yet recent research shows that teachers are struggling to build women into their narratives for medieval history. With the Bayeux Tapestry coming to the British Museum in 2027 – an object likely made by women in England – this session aims to boost knowledge about the sources for key female operators both during and after the Conquest, as landowners, military actors and religious figures, as well as their connections to material objects in the Anglo-Norman World.
Learning outcomes:
Attendees to this session will benefit from and contribute to knowledge-building resources about key individuals aimed at Key Stage 3 teachers, learn about new historical interpretations of key figures, and discuss strategies and best practice tested in the classroom by members of the Teaching Medieval Women group (www.teachingmedievalwomen.org) for incorporating women successfully in the teaching of medieval history.
Friday, Session 4: 15:15–16:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | history subject leader, trainee teacher, early career teacher, classroom teacher, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
Making meaning in a world turned upside down: refining a more layered Key Stage 3 seventeenth-century enquiry
Peter Jackson
Ryedale School, Nawton Beadlam
This session will peel back the layers of a Year 8 enquiry into the seventeenth century, exploring the question: In what ways was the world turned upside down in the seventeenth century? I will share how and why I redesigned this enquiry – expanding its chronological scope, weaving in richer historical stories and incorporating more diverse and local perspectives. These changes created a more layered approach that helped students to build a deeper and more complete understanding of the historical concept of change. I will also outline the planning principles behind the enquiry and, crucially, how I systematically check for understanding, emphasise key concepts and assess learning. This session will be valuable for anyone looking to refresh their seventeenth-century enquiries or explore wider principles of curriculum design.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will understand key principles of curriculum design.
- Participants will learn ideas for how to use historical story in the classroom.
- Participants will come away with ideas for how to create a knowledge-rich curriculum.
Friday, Session 4: 15:15–16:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | history subject leader
Contesting the crown: empire, independence and identity in the Caribbean
Otis Blaize
Trinity School, Croydon
This session explores the complex and evolving relationship between the British monarchy and the Caribbean, examining the legacies of empire, the transition to independence and ongoing debates about identity, sovereignty and nationhood. Drawing on research from the HA’s Teacher Fellowship on the Caribbean, Monarchy and Legacies of Empire, participants will engage with diverse Caribbean perspectives on monarchy, including constitutional change, royal symbolism, public attitudes and the region’s continuing debates over republicanism, reparations and decolonisation. The session will also highlight practical and creative approaches for integrating these histories into the history classroom. It will reflect on how the legacies of empire continue to shape Caribbean societies today.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will explore the historical and contemporary role of the monarchy in shaping Caribbean identity.
- We will look at examples of how to incorporate Caribbean histories across the curriculum.
- The session will evaluate Caribbean perspectives on empire, independence and its legacies.
Friday, Session 4: 15:15–16:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, post-16 | history subject leader, classroom teacher, teacher educator/mentor, trainee teacher
The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz
Steve Mastin
Consultant
What role could music play in a death camp? What was the effect on those women who owed their survival to their participation in a Nazi propaganda project? And how did it feel to be forced to provide solace to the perpetrators of a genocide that claimed the lives of their family and friends? This workshop will draw upon the work of historians Anne Sebba and Yehuda Bauer. They have emphasised a broad definition of resistance to counter the narrative of Jewish passivity, a perspective supported by other scholars who have documented a wide range of Jewish defiance.
Learning outcomes
- This session widens the study of the Holocaust to include two to three lessons on Jewish resistance.
- This session will provide a summary of the latest scholarship, with suggestions for further reading.
- Participants will gain a takeaway enquiry of four lessons that can be easily adapted.
Friday, Session 4: 15:15–16:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | classroom teacher, history subject leader
From making it stick to making an argument: supporting learners who struggle with GCSE history
Dale Banham
Northgate High School, Ipswich
How do we support all students with the cognitive challenges of GCSE history? This workshop will outline a sequence of strategies that help struggling students to remember information and then shape it into effective explanations and arguments. It will draw on key findings from cognitive science and successful writing strategies from classroom-based action research.
Learning outcomes
Participants will be able to take away practical strategies for improving the attainment of students who struggle to cope with the recall and writing challenges of GCSE history.
Friday, Session 4: 15:15–16:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, early career teacher, trainee teacher
Perfecting personal statements: supporting A-level students who want to study history at university
Heather Sherman
New College Doncaster
Empowering students to secure an offer to study history at university starts with an engaging, articulate and mature personal statement. In this session, we will explore practical strategies to support students to carry out and meaningfully engage with super-curricular research, and how they can showcase this in their personal statement. Encouraging students to confidently articulate their interests and research findings beyond their A-level curriculum will support their personal statement to stand out in the application process.
Learning outcomes
Participants will understand how to use a range of strategies that will support students to carry out meaningful super-curricular research to engage with topics beyond their A-level curriculum.
Participants will understand how to support students to write effective super-curricular paragraphs.
Participants will know how super-curricular research fits within the context of the personal statement.
Friday, Session 4: 15:15–16:15
Suitable for: post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader
Using story well in history
Christine Counsell
Opening Worlds
Using stories in history teaching is now common. History teachers often write and talk about their use. But what makes them effective? Things go wrong when stories are bolted on as extras, poorly written, lose consistent voice or fail to manage depth and overview. Using Hachette’s Changing Histories, this workshop examines principles for optimal use of stories at Key Stage 3, within resourcing and teaching. Christine will tease out story’s potential for sustaining attention across a lesson, illustrate its relationship with the disciplinary journey of an enquiry, and show the role of long-term planning in making a story land. She will explore not only what makes narrative memorable, but also how little riches of small stories serve bigger framework knowledge and make it endure.
Friday, Session 4: 15:15–16:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, teacher educators/mentors
Dawson Lecture
History of all for all: why we all need to step up if we are ever to achieve this ambition and why politicians need to let us get on with it
Michael Maddison
HA Deputy President
In the Dawson Lecture for 2026, Michael will reflect on the HA’s strategic vision: history of all for all. He will argue that it is imperative for the history community – teaching and non-teaching – to step up now if we are to get anywhere near to achieving this ambition. Michael will draw upon his wide range of experiences from the over 50 years in which he has been involved in history education, as a teacher, senior leader, examiner, inspector and now consultant. He will argue that understanding the past helps us to understand what makes us human, and that teaching history is vital if we are to build a better world. He will also reflect on some of the barriers that still stand in our way, not least the frequent and often unhelpful interventions by politicians. Overall, though, this will be about success, about being pragmatic and about being optimistic, and the whole lecture will be illuminated by stories of what this inspector saw and what he wished he hadn’t seen!
Friday: 16:45–17:30
Saturday Sessions
Teaching slavery: principles and approaches to Britain’s colonial past
Abdul Mohamud, Robin Whitburn
UCL Institute of Education, London
This session introduces the ideas behind Teaching Slavery: new approaches to Britain’s colonial past (UCL Press, 2025). Developed over many years of collaborative work between historians and history educators, it sets out a framework for teaching transatlantic slavery through rigorous scholarship, thoughtful pedagogy and ethical classroom practice. Participants will explore how the book’s 15 principles, which link historical content, enquiry design and teacher reflection, emerged from an Historical Association Teacher Fellowship. The session invites teachers to consider how these principles can support confident and inclusive teaching about slavery and its legacies across Key Stages 3 to 5.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will understand the historiographical and pedagogical principles developed for teaching Britain’s involvement in transatlantic slavery.
- Participants will engage with practical ideas for enquiry design, classroom dialogue and racial literacy, grounded in rigorous historical thinking.
- The session will reflect on how curricular and professional choices can promote justice-oriented and inclusive history teaching.
Saturday, Session 1: 11:00–12:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, early career teacher, trainee teacher, teacher educator/mentor, senior leader
Testing more than recall: designing MCQs that reveal pupils’ ability to think about the past
Jonnie Grande
Ark Pioneer Academy, London
Multiple-choice questions have lots going for them: they are quick to assess; they don’t rely on human judgement to mark; and they provide quantifiable data. But in history, MCQs often suffer from testing little more than whether a pupil can recall – or simply recognise – a ‘fact’ that they have been directly taught. But what if an MCQ could reveal the depth and flexibility of a pupil’s knowledge through testing their ability to reason about the past using what they know? In this session, we will explore various principles for designing MCQs that do exactly this, and practise using these principles to design our own questions.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will consider the advantages and disadvantages of using MCQs as part of a diet of history assessment.
- Participants will gain an introduction to some principles for designing MCQs that require pupils to reason about the past.
- The session will explore a range of tried and tested history MCQs.
Saturday, Session 1: 11:00–12:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | history subject leader, trainee teacher, early career teacher, classroom teacher, senior leader
Humans and the planet: weaving environmental history into a thematic Key Stage 3 curriculum
Fred Oxby
Head of History, South Yorkshire
When we decided to introduce environmental history into our curriculum, we faced the challenge of incorporating a deep and meaningful new enquiry into our existing thematic model. Our response was an enquiry across the whole of Key Stage 3 that takes students across time and place, such as to the ancient city of Jericho, the forests of Norman England and the floating gardens of the Aztec, as they study the impact of humans on the globe. The workshop will explore the benefits and drawbacks of a thematic curriculum, reflect on the use of Key Stage 3-wide enquiry questions and offer practical ideas for incorporating environmental history into every curriculum.
Learning outcomes
The aims of this session are to:
- reflect on strengths and limitations of a thematic Key Stage 3 curriculum.
- present our curricular response to the environmental crisis.
- provide practical examples of how environmental history can be embedded into the curriculum.
Saturday, Session 1: 11:00–12:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, post-16 | history subject leader, classroom teacher, senior leader, early career teacher, trainee teacher, teacher educator/mentor
Fun and games 2.0: history lessons made engaging
Natasha De Stefano Honey
Bishop Thomas Grant, London
This follow-up to last year’s conference session offers new, practical strategies for all key stages. Building on last time, we’ll explore additional ways in which to teach source analysis and essay-writing, alongside fresh games, creative hooks and out-of-the-box activities. The focus remains on chunked, accessible learning, with plenty of easy takeaways to try straight away. Examples will again come mainly from Key Stages 4 and 5 (AQA), but can be adapted across subjects and exam boards. Come prepared to take part in activities and have some fun!
Learning outcomes
- The session will make you rethink the way in which you teach key skills in the classroom.
- The session will help you to remember that fun can still be had in a content-rich curriculum.
- The session will provide and test easy-to-use (and set up) creative methods.
Saturday, Session 1: 11:00–12:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, early career teacher, trainee teacher, history subject leader
Embedding inclusive histories at Key Stage 4: from collections to classrooms
James Ellis
Hastings Academy, Hastings; Inclusive Histories, Egham
Jess Brown
Inclusive Histories, Egham
How can GCSE history be more inclusive, engaging and representative of the diverse people and movements that have shaped Britain? Led by James Ellis (Chief Consultant Teacher) and Jess Brown (Project Officer) from Royal Holloway’s AHRC-funded Inclusive Histories, this workshop explores practical ways in which to embed inclusive stories into Key Stage 4 teaching. Drawing on partnerships with AQA and eight key archives, we’ll share new classroom-ready resources developed for the Power and the People specification – like the stories of Mavis Best, Elizabeth Heyrick and Shapurji Saklatvala – as case studies for how inclusive histories can be embedded at GCSE more broadly. Whatever your exam board, this session offers practical, adaptable ideas for broadening the stories that you teach – without losing sight of rigour, curriculum or assessment.
Learning outcomes
Participants will:
- explore new case studies applicable across multiple GCSE specifications.
- sample approaches that combine inclusivity with skill-building (significance, evidence, causation).
- share strategies for integrating representation at Key Stage 4.
Saturday, Session 1: 11:00–12:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, early career teacher, trainee teacher
A thorn between two roses? Why Key Stage 4 is ruining history and what we can do about it
Alex Dickens
Harris Federation, London
We all know how to teach GCSE history. We know the specification, we know the assessment objectives and we know what students need to do to earn particular grades. And our students achieve well. Mostly. So why is Year 12 so difficult? This session will explore how the current GCSE specifications bake in misconceptions about historical thinking that, if not avoided in Key Stage 4, come back to haunt teachers of Year 12. The session will focus specifically on how source evaluation, analysis of interpretations and conceptual writing can be developed at Key Stage 3 and extended at Key Stage 4 so that students who love history are better prepared to make the transition to Key Stage 5.
Learning outcomes
The session will explore how student understanding of source evaluation and analysis of interpretations develops between Key Stage 4 and 5, how teachers can support students with this transition, and how the seeds of analytical writing at Key Stage 5 can be planted in Key Stage 3.
Saturday, Session 1: 11:00–12:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, senior leader
From MDLVIII to 1603: Elizabethan England’s number revolution
Rob Eastaway
Maths Inspiration
While Elizabethan England was staging Hamlet and sending explorers across the oceans, it was also quietly changing the way in which it counted. In the late sixteenth century, England made the tricky switch from ancient Roman numerals to the ‘new-fangled’ Arabic numerals that we use today. For decades, people (including Shakespeare) juggled both systems, much like Britain's present-day mix of metric and imperial measures. In this workshop, author Rob Eastaway explores how this numerical revolution influenced Elizabethan education, navigation, trade and even theatres such as The Globe.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will understand the historical shift from Roman numerals to Arabic numerals in late Tudor England, and place it within the wider context of sixteenth-century change.
- The session will connect the numeral revolution to key GCSE themes, including Elizabethan exploration, the role of education and developments in culture and society.
- The session aims to enrich lessons on Elizabethan England with fresh, cross-curricular links to maths and English.
Saturday, Session 1: 11:00–12:00
Suitable for: Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, trainee teacher, early career teacher, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
Reimagining local, national and imperial histories in the classroom
Colin McCormick
Teach First, Liverpool
Caitlyn Palmer
Temple Moor High, Leeds
Our session will explore how teachers can use scholarship to connect local, national and global histories. Drawing on Corinne Fowler’s Our Island Stories, we share how we used this text (and others) to curate a national project where we created classroom resources. Building on Fowler’s insight that ‘you could drop a pin on a map of Britain and find links to empire and slavery nearby’, we reveal how this lens reshaped our thinking.
Learning outcomes
Attendees will leave with practical models, case studies and adaptable resources to help students to see that the history of empire is rooted in the places in which we live today. The session will also show how engaging with scholarship like Fowler’s can strengthen disciplinary thinking, helping pupils to use evidence, assess significance and engage with interpretation when exploring how Britain’s landscapes, institutions and identities have been shaped by empire.
Saturday, Session 2: 12:15–13:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, teacher educator/mentor, trainee teacher
How can stories, historians and museum resources be used together?
David Hibbert, Eleanor Nicholson
The Cherwell School, Oxford
In this session, we want to make a case that the use of stories is made richer and more rigorous by explicit links to the interpretations of historians and the sources of evidence that they used to form them. We want to showcase the richness of material that is readily available to teachers through museums, libraries and archives, as well as make it clear that using this material does not require proximity to a convenient museum. We will also discuss and exemplify this through an ongoing collaboration with the Ashmolean Museum.
Learning outcomes
The session will explore and exemplify an approach to teaching disciplinary knowledge that integrates story.
Saturday, Session 2: 12:15–13:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor, trainee teacher, early career teacher
Bringing Holocaust education and archaeology together in the classroom – a new approach
Hannah Randall
Holocaust Centre North, Huddersfield
Will Mitchell
Centre of Archaeology, University of Huddersfield
As we lose first-hand witnesses of the Holocaust, and as Holocaust denial grows, the importance of research-informed and evidence-based educational practice to support Holocaust education is essential. Holocaust Centre North and the Centre of Archaeology have developed an innovative session for Key Stage 3 and 4 pupils, directly using the results of ongoing research projects, which explores the variety of research methods used by archaeologists to present this difficult past. Combining the fields of Holocaust education, archaeology and the humanities inspires students to take a practical approach to their learning whilst tackling a sensitive subject.
Learning outcomes
This session will provide teachers with practical ideas on how to address Holocaust education in the classroom, grounded in academia, as well as guidance on how to bring archaeology into history teaching to inspire learning. This session will present how the sciences and humanities can complement each other, both in Holocaust education and across the history curriculum.
Saturday, Session 2: 12:15–13:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, teacher educator/mentor
Building belonging in the history classroom
Andraya Holmes
Harris Federation, London
The concept of belonging is having an educational moment – but what does it really look like for us as history educators? This session will seek to explore what belonging in history looks like, and how it can be intentionally increased in our classrooms through inclusive pedagogies and curriculum choices so that all children can thrive and achieve.
Learning outcomes
Participants will develop a deeper understanding of what belonging looks like in the history classroom and what they can practically do to increase this feeling within the classroom, to improve outcomes and the experience for students.
Saturday, Session 2: 12:15–13:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | history subject leader, teacher educator/mentor
Beyond the classroom: using curricular visits to support historical thinking
Geraint Brown
Consultant, Cambridge
Kath Goudie
Avanti Grange, Bishop’s Stortford
Sites of history can be powerful classrooms and visits can vividly bring the past to life. But how can we move beyond a ‘nice day out’ to deepen pupils’ historical thinking? This session will explore approaches to local, national and international history site visits that help pupils to understand complex historic environments. We will consider how visits can be used to support and enhance pupils’ disciplinary thinking by integrating them into the curriculum at both Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. With practical examples and powerful stories, we will help you to make your visits meaningful, memorable and historically rigorous.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will receive advice on integrating historical site visits into the curriculum to underpin disciplinary thinking, particularly similarity and difference and change and continuity.
- Participants will leave with practical tips for planning historical site visits, including for GCSE studies of a site in its historical context.
- Participants will hear about ideas and approaches to bringing sites to life using the power of carefully chosen stories.
Saturday, Session 2: 12:15–13:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | history subject leader, classroom teacher
Better history: using AI to help students to develop more effective thinking about documents
Andrew Payne
The National Archives,
Laura Howey, Ben Walsh
David Ross Education Trust, Skegness
Can AI help students to develop better historical thinking skills, instead of replacing them? The National Archives has been working with students from DRET (Davis Ross Education Trust) to investigate large collections of documents using AI. This session will demonstrate the approach taken and the benefits achieved in using AI to develop student understanding of source-based enquiry and historical interpretation. If you have ever wanted to get your students working effectively with document collections for enquiry-based learning, but found the reality prohibitive, then this session is for you. If you’re sceptical about whether AI can improve student thinking, rather than replace it, then this session is for you. If you are doubtful about the possibility of doing ‘real history’ in the classroom, then this session is for you.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will learn how to structure document-based enquiries to develop students’ thinking.
- Participants will hear how to avoid pitfalls of using technology and documents with students.
- Participants will discover how AI can be used effectively.
Saturday, Session 2: 12:15–13:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
The future of history at AQA
Katie Hall
Subject Lead for History and Politics, AQA
Join us for a panel discussion with AQA’s Subject Support and Product Team, where we will discuss the Curriculum and Assessment Review outcomes and share insights from our work to prepare for reform and the views of AQA history leaders and teachers. We will take questions from delegates about the future of AQA history specifications.
Saturday, Session 2: 12:15–13:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16
How do we make history meaningful for young people?
Dan Lyndon-Cohen
Schools History Project; Park View School, London
This workshop will explore the pioneering and radical principles that launched the Schools Council History 13–16 Project in 1972, and reflect on their transformative impact in the history classroom. It will also make the case that these principles are not just relevant for today, but also represent a powerful and practical toolkit that can inspire students of history in 2025 and beyond.
Learning outcomes
Participants will be able to discuss and reflect on the impact of core principles of SHP and have a range of practical applications to take away that will help to make history more meaningful for their students.
Saturday, lunchtime fringe: 13:25—14:05
Suitable for: Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
Using role-play to teach consequence: a comparison of experiences
Lucy Wimhurst, Verity Morgan
The Cotswold School, Bourton-on-the-Water
This session draws on teachers’ experiences of using role-play to teach the second-order concept of consequence across two different schools with very different student demographics. With current trends leaning more towards traditional, direct-instruction methods, we aim to demonstrate how experiential learning methods, when used within the right parameters, continue to benefit a wide range of students, and not just those with high prior attainment (as much of the literature suggests).
Learning outcomes
Using lesson resources and teachers’ experiences, we will highlight how role-play can be a useful tool to teach and consolidate second-order concepts, especially when further complicating them to fully expand the range of the concept. Evidence from the first school shows that the students who benefited most from this session were those with low prior attainment. We will compare and contrast this to the outcomes at the second school, with much higher general attainment across the school.
Saturday, Session 3: 14:15–15:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader
Stop listing, start arguing: bringing out the debate in similarity and difference
Sarah Jackson-Buckley, Jessie Phillips
Sawston Village College, Cambridge
Are you tired of similarity and difference work that is more description than argument? Do you find it hard to get pupils to see what there is to debate about? Similarity and difference should be deeply analytical. After all, historians make generalisations all the time: they regularly have to argue that a particular ‘group’ or series of events have enough commonalities to be categorised as ‘one’. In this session, we will share how we have increased our pupils’ understanding of this type of argument by allowing them to debate the extent to which various people, groups and events can be meaningfully tied together under shared labels or descriptions.
Learning outcomes
Participants will leave this session with a range of practical activities, enquiry questions and resources to improve the quality of their pupils’ thinking. This will include a range of analogies to consider the extent and nature of those similarities and differences.
Saturday, Session 3: 14:15–15:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 | classroom teacher, teacher educator/mentor
Planning the GCSE backwards: ‘final performance as deceiver and guide’ in Key Stage 4 history
Ed Durbin
Yate Academy, Bristol; Greenshaw Learning Trust
What does a Key Stage 4 curriculum that raises attainment and stays true to the traditions of history as a discipline look like? As a new subject leader in 2018, Christine Counsell’s landmark blog – ‘final performance as deceiver and guide’ – was decisive in how Ed planned and developed the Key Stage 4 curriculum in his school and trust. Now, coming to the end of eight years as a head of history, Ed will reflect on how Counsell’s formulation can be applied to GCSE history teaching and share practical ideas about how teachers can help their students to build the layers of knowledge that lead to success in public exams.
Learning outcomes
- Participant will learn strategies for raising attainment at GCSE.
- Participants will consider how to create a long-term plan for GCSE history teaching.
- Participants will leave with ideas and examples of GCSE history teaching and revision resources.
- Participants will consider how to gain support from their team and line manager.
Saturday, Session 3: 14:15–15:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor, classroom teacher, early career teacher, trainee teacher
What does A.C.E. history teaching look like?
Richard McFahn
University of Sussex
Aaron Wilkes
University of Warwick
In this session, Richard and Aaron aim to provide the antidote to the Curriculum Review’s recent findings that a disproportionate amount of history teaching focuses on rote learning and teaching to the test. They will emphasise how to make history lessons Accessible, Challenging and Engaging. To do this, they will provide you with five simple yet effective teaching strategies that you can use the next time you teach your classes.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will leave with knowledge of the recommendations made in the Curriculum Review for history.
- Participants will come away with tried and tested teaching strategies to use to help to make lessons accessible, challenging and engaging.
Saturday, Session 3: 14:15–15:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 2, Key Stage 4, post-16 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, early career teacher
How do we create future historians in the classroom?
Helen Carrel
Sir William Perkins, Chertsey
Interest in public history has never been higher – any glance down a TV schedule or a podcast search will demonstrate this. It’s no coincidence that A-level and GCSE uptake for history is proportionally high, with the Royal Historical Society reporting on the strength and popularity of the subject in schools. Yet it is clear that students frequently do not regard history as a viable job prospect. This session uses school-based research from the HA Teacher Fellowship programme to demonstrate how we can shape the historians of the future through learning outcomes modelled on public history and using cutting-edge academic research in the classroom. The session will also demonstrate how to run innovative and interactive career-focused sessions for sixth-form students.
Learning outcomes
- Delegates will leave with lesson resource templates to support students when designing museum exhibitions as an outcome.
- Delegates will come away with templates to support students designing public history events as an outcome.
Saturday, Session 3: 14:15–15:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, post-16 | history subject leader, classroom teacher, early career teacher, trainee teacher, teacher educator/mentor
The Ottomans, the Great Exhibition and Gorbachev: planning end-of-year enquiries across Key Stage 3
Jacob Olivey
Ark Soane Academy, London
What made the Ottoman Empire so powerful? How did the Great Exhibition portray Victorian Britain? Why did the Soviet Union collapse? In this session, I will share three end-of-year enquiries that I have written for my school’s Key Stage 3 history curriculum.
Learning outcomes
Participants will see concrete examples of how end-of-year enquiries can be used to revisit and consolidate previous topics. For example, studying the Great Exhibition at the end of Year 8 allows us to strengthen pupils’ knowledge and understanding of the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution. Participants will also consider how end-of-year enquiries can be used to ‘tie up loose ends’ in each year. For example, studying Gorbachev at the end of Year 9 enables pupils to understand the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
Saturday, Session 3: 14:15–15:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 3 | history subject leader, classroom teacher
Education Keynote
Ofsted
Tim Jenner
Ofsted
We are delighted to be joined by Tim Jenner, Ofsted’s subject lead for history, for a special education keynote. Tim will discuss Ofsted’s 2025 inspection framework, methodology and recent research findings, and the implications of these for history teachers and subject leaders in schools.
Saturday: 15:45–16:45
Sessions from other pathways
Primary teachers and subject leaders may also be interested in these workshops from other education pathways.
How one plant can change the world: what can gardens, parks and plants tell us about history?
Susie Townsend
University of Roehampton
And now for something completely different... From biopiracy to meditation, what can plants and gardens reveal about history? As long as there have been settlements, there have been gardens. What do they tell us about our changing beliefs and ideas? This is an interactive workshop, focused on a theme beyond 1066, which will hopefully include something for everyone: high drama, continuity and change, national identity, fascinating individuals and even a bit of garden planning… It will also help children to recognise the interconnection between people and plants, along with the human impact on the environment. Get your trowels at the ready!
Learning outcomes
- Delegates will take away interactive activities for the classroom.
- Delegates will consider links to sustainability.
- We will consider issues from both a national and an international perspective.
- Delegates will leave with classroom resources and ideas on cross-curricular links.
Friday, Session 4: 15:15–16:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 | classroom teacher, history subject leader, teacher educator/mentor, early career teacher, trainee teacher, senior leader
For Wales, see England: rebalancing British history in the primary classroom
Alex Pethick
Knowledge Schools Trust, London
The National Curriculum calls for the teaching of British history, yet in practice most schools overwhelmingly focus on England, leaving Wales and Scotland underrepresented. Through the use of storytelling, this session explores how Welsh history, rich in culture, conflict and contribution, can be brought to life in the classroom. From Owain Glyndŵr’s legendary uprising to the global legacy of Welsh coal in powering the Industrial Revolution, we will examine why Welsh history matters and how it can be meaningfully integrated into the primary curriculum.
Learning outcomes
- Participants will gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of Welsh history and its significance within the broader context of British history.
- Participants will leave with practical examples for embedding Welsh history into the primary curriculum in engaging and meaningful ways.
Saturday, Session 3: 14:15–15:15
Suitable for: Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 | classroom teacher, trainee teacher, early career teacher, history subject leader, senior leader, teacher educator/mentor
