As the Director of the Schools History Project, it is a great honour and privilege to represent the History teaching community, but with that comes a deep sense of responsibility. That certainly rang true for me, when I was working on our submission for the government’s curriculum review. When I opened the document, I was overwhelmed by the 54 (!) questions covering every aspect of school life, but with the support of so many wonderful history educators, we were able to make light of this herculean task (shoutout to Martin Spafford, Claire Hollis, Debbie Bogard, Ailsa Fidler, Clare Stow, Sue Temple, Karin Doull, Helen Crawford and Judy Clarke). You can have a look at our submission at the bottom of the blog, I’m confident that we have done a decent job in representing SHPs views, which will hopefully be acted upon in the next round of consultation.
Whilst I was deep in the muck of the Curriculum Review, what was keeping me going was the planning for the launch of our first Yorkshire History Forum which took place last week. Our focus was on local history with the tagline ‘Making School History Hit Home’, and it was wonderful to see over 50 primary and secondary history teachers enjoying the inspiring workshops covering topics ranging from the Miner’s Strike to Riveaulx Abbey and the Thornborough. It went down a storm with lots of positive feedback like this, “Fantastic event and really well organised! I’ve taken away lots of great ideas. Thank you!
We are very excited about our next SHP Understanding event with the Teaching Medieval Women team in conjunction with the British Library, which takes place on Saturday January 18th 2025 from 1-5pm. Your free ticket also includes entry to the exhibition (worth £17). I’m anxiously awaiting confirmation that we will have live music from a musician who plays a hammered dulcimer (I had to google it too Hammered dulcimer – Wikipedia!). However, we will be certainly hearing from Professor Jonathan Phillips, Dr Natasha Hodgson and Dr Ellie Woodacre in their keynote lectures on the themes of women and power, religion and movement. There will also be a session for A Level students using source materials from the British Library exhibition on Medieval Women including the Lion’s skull that belonged to Margaret of Anjou! The event will conclude with a roundtable panel to discuss ways to teach these histories in schools. If you are interested in securing a free place, email d.lyndon-cohen@leedstrinity.ac.uk but spaces are limited!
Our War Inna Babylon SHP Understanding project continues to go from strength to strength. We are digging into the archives of the Broadwater Farm Youth Association and the defence campaign for the Tottenham Three at an event on December 14th and I’ve heard positive rumours of potential funding for the next rounds of the project which is very exciting. Watch this space.
Our Developing Teachers’ Conference (formerly New Teachers’ Conference) will be taking place virtually on Saturday February 1st. This conference is pitched at teachers who want to build on their practice in the primary and secondary history classrooms, and we are super excited about the stellar line up that we have in place:
Tickets sales open today from Developing Teachers’ Conference 2025 | Leeds Trinity University Online Store and this one is an absolute bargain – Early Bird prices £40 and £35 for trainees/ECTs/Primary and there are also group bookings available here Developing Teachers’ Conference – Group Bookings | Leeds Trinity University Online Store (3+ = 10% off, 5+ = 15%, 10+ = 20%). We also have 5 copies of Shalina Patel’s book The History Lessons to give away so watch out for the competitions that we will be holding over the next few months.
We’ve received over 25 submissions for the summer conference and I am on a promise for a few more so I’m very much looking forward to curating the programme for July 11-13th. Keynotes are from Professor Corinne Fowler (Colonial Countryside) and Dr Julie Gottlieb (University of Sheffield) who has done some brilliant work on Emotional History and has agreed to run an SHP Understanding project in 2025-26. SHP legends Dale Banham and Rich Kerridge (OCR) and myself have some exciting plans for a Saturday night extravaganza and we’ve got both a musician and a poet in residence this year. Tickets are going on sale early in January.
Alex continues to drive the PATHS (SHP Curriculum PATHS – Sharing Hub) and PATHSfinders projects forward – if you’ve not had a chance to look at the latter, it’s absolutely awesome, check it out here Britain and India, 1600-1947: sources . He’s also working on our joint project on teaching Indigenous Histories with Dr Caroline Pennock and that is going to be such an important and groundbreaking piece of work.
2025 certainly promises to be an exciting year for the Schools History Project! Come and join us.
Seasons greetings to you all!
Dan
SHP response to the curriculum review
