Key Stage 3 school resource packs
Together with four secondary history teacher consultants, the SESC project has created Key Stage 3 History school resource packs about secondary education and social change in the UK since 1945.
These school resource packs are free to download for any secondary school history teachers interested in secondary education and social change. Through the packs, Key Stage 3 pupils will learn about how the history of secondary education reflects the vast social and cultural changes that have transformed the UK since the Second World War. While these packs all focus on one main research question: In what ways do schools reflect change in the United Kingdom since 1945? Each pack is also individually themed as follows: Gender & sexuality, Class & social mobility, Race & ethnicity, and Everyday school life.
Each pack contains material for a historical enquiry seven lessons in length, and includes primary source material, focused activities, and historiographical debates. The SESC school resource packs aim to:
- Introduce rigorous historical enquiries about secondary education and social change, relating to one of the four topics
- Develop pupils’ core subject skills
- Offer teachers will access to a variety of primary sources, planning support, & resources
- Challenge insular understandings of post-1945 British history through the inclusion of more diverse perspectives on how race and gender shaped experience
- Bring university scholars into the classroom through videos of historians conducting source analyses
To get started, please watch our introductory video below:
While aimed to fit within the Key Stage 3 curriculum where there is a focus on core themes of post-war British history, we also encourage teachers to use and adapt these resource packs for pupils in different year groups.
The SESC school resource packs are freely available for any teachers to download, and we hope that you enjoy using them with your pupils. If you use these resources, and would like more projects like this to happen in the future, we encourage you to provide us with feedback so that we may demonstrate the value and impact of collaboration between academics and teachers to future funders and institutions.
Teachers willing to share their experiences using SESC’s school resources can do so by filling out the feedback survey below:
Download the files
The ‘General files’ for the packs can be downloaded directly below, including a glossary which contains useful definitions relating to every pack. The full resource packs for each theme are available to download via the Historical Association website. Simply click on the below buttons to be linked directly to the download page for each pack. Please note, you will be required to create a free account on the Historical Association website in order to access the files. The files for each pack include: Lesson Powerpoints, lesson resources, comprehensive teacher notes, and videos of scholars discussing conducting source analyses and discussing key historiography. All the videos for the KS3 History resource packs can be found on our Historian videos page, and on the University of Cambridge Streaming Media Service.
General files
This part of the project is generously funded in part by the Cambridge Admissions Office Widening Participation Project Fund and the AHRC Impact Fund.