Bringing you insight from one of the most established history events, the School History Project’s 30th Annual Conference 19 July 2018

Year after year, the School History Project (SHP) Conference gathers together the most inspiring history educators across the nation.

The talent, creativity and dedication of the history education community never ceases to amaze; and what makes this conference so special, is the willingness of participants to engage with new ideas and to build on their own practise.  

Since this was a big milestone, I thought I'd share and bring you the exclusive insights from the School History Project's 30th Annual Conference and how learning history can become more rigorous and enjoyable for all students of all abilities.

School History Project's 30th Annual Conference

There’s always an eclectic range of plenary speakers, workshop leaders and fringe sessions at the SHP conference. These reflect the principles on which the Schools History Project is based. 

This year’s conference, which takes place each summer at Leeds Trinity University, has a strong emphasis on four key things that are of current concern to history teachers:

1. Ensuring that all GCSE students enjoy studying history and achieve the grades they deserve
2. Developing the Key Stage 3 curriculum to ensure coherence and to build progression
3. Making the history curriculum more diverse and inclusive
4. Engaging students with the historic environment

Make history personal

A strong theme of SHP’s 30th conference was the need to make history personal. 

The creative combination of outline and depth of knowledge lies at the heart of all effective planning in history. 

Students will only make sense of the past if we provided opportunities to help them see the bigger picture, but they will only engage with history if we base our teaching on the experiences of individual people. 

These experiences bring history to life. ‘Making history personal’ was reflected in many sessions across the conference. 

Here are three examples that you may find helpful:

• The plenary session from Hannah Barker, Sarah Alderson and Daisy Horsley Putting people back into the history of the Industrial Revolution provided an excellent example of the ways in which local families can be used to give students a more complex understanding of the process of industrialisation
• In the plenary session Our Migration Story: migration histories and why they matter we heard from five of the academics who contributed to the award-winning Our Migration Story website. This is an invaluable resource for OCR centres studying the migration thematic study at GCSE or for colleagues who are planning a study of migration at Key Stage 3
• Helen Snelson’s brilliant Sunday morning plenary Subjectivity as a strength: using oral history in your Key Stage 3 curriculum demonstrated the power of oral history to open up new lines of enquiry, connect students with people’s lives in the past and build relationships between generations.

The last words on SHP's 30th Annual Conference

People often comment on the strong sense of community at the SHP Conference. 

And it was great to see so many OCR centres at this year’s SHP’s 30th Annual Conference. 

As usual, we had glowing feedback from participants. Here’s just a few of the comments gathered from evaluation forms left by the attendees:

Like diving into a revitalising ocean of disciplinary professional development

Amazing! The SHP Conference just keeps getting better and better. Thank you for reinvigorating my love of history ready for September

Recharged, buzzing and exalted thanks to SHP

Enlightening and reaffirming, giving a great sense of community amongst history teachers

Excellent CPD, the best I go to all year. Reinvigorates the (history teaching) soul

The last word on SHP’s 30th conference goes to Hideyo Sugao, a regular participant at the SHP Conference from the University of Tokyo. 

Here’s what she wrote: ‘This is a lovely history community’. I hope you can join our ‘lovely community’ at the 31st SHP Conference, 5-7 July, 2019.

Over the next few weeks

We’ll be adding resources and news based on workshops to the SHP website, so look out for these and sign up for the termly SHP e-news if you’re not already on our list.

Last but not least, a special thanks goes out to all those that were involved.

If you would like to experience this at first hand, please join us at 31st SHP Conference, taking place on 5-7 July 2019.

Get in touch

Share your experiences and submit your comments below. If you have any specific questions, email us at history@ocr.org.uk and for regular updates about anything History related, sign up for email updates or follow us on Twitter @OCR_History.