What was the context and impact of migration in modern Britain? This collection of original documents can be used to support GCSE units on modern British immigration for AQA History: Britain: Migration, empires, and the people: c790 to the present day; Edexcel, Migrants in Britain c800-present; OCR, Migrants to Britain c1250 to present (Schools History Project) and for ‘depth studies’ on ‘Modern Britain’ at A Level for AQA and Edexcel. Some of sources could be selected by teachers to support history lessons for the Key stage 3 unit: ‘Challenges for Britain, Europe, and the wider world 1901 to the present day: social, cultural, and technological change in post-war British society; Britain’s place in the world since 1945’. This collection of original documents is particularly useful for knowledge selection on modern British migration. Teachers can use it with students to develop their own historical enquiries as well as to prepare and practice source-based exam questions. The collection includes a wide range of source types to encourage students to think more broadly when exploring attitudes towards migration and its impact. Teachers have the flexibility to download all documents and transcripts to create their own resources. It is important to note that many documents cover sensitive subjects. Some include language and concepts that are entirely unacceptable and inappropriate today. We suggest that teachers look at the material carefully before introducing to students. It would be helpful to discuss the language and ideas contained in a source beforehand. Teachers may wish to break the documents into smaller extracts if they appear too long or create additional simplified transcripts. Please note that the government film on the Race Relations Act 1968 (available via The National Archives website) is a public record created in 1969. It was also released in Hindi and Urdu. It has been preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives. Courtesy of the BFI National Archive. It includes language which may be considered offensive. However, we think it important to show the film as accurate representation of the record to help us understand the past. With each document we have provided a ‘brief descriptor’ to signal the content; a document caption, and 3-4 suggested prompt questions. We hope this will allow students to work independently if wished on any document, or within small class discussion groups, or to assist teachers in the development of their own questions. Also included in these notes is a suggested starter activity. The aim is to familiarise learners with the types of sources contained in the collection. We hope too that exposure to original source material may also foster further document research.

An online themed collection on the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 . Teachers and students can access to original documents of the period with teacher’s notes, transcripts, timeline and family tree. Audio recordings of most documents open them up to a new audience, and an accompanying Pinterest board brings the collection to life. There are printed Jacobite pamphlets and to a song calling for George I to go home and many other sources.

The purpose of this document collection is to allow students and teachers to develop their own questions and lines of historical enquiry on the political and social aspects of 1950s Britain. The documents themselves are arranged according to theme, so that sources are grouped together rather than a chronological order. Some of the themes include: the economy; rationing; housing, the National Health Service, race relations, cultural life, the Suez crisis, and nuclear protest.

The purpose of this document collection is to allow students and teachers to develop their own questions and lines of historical enquiry on the Georgian period. The documents themselves are titled on the web page so it is possible for teachers and pupils to detect different themes and concentrate on documents on similar topics if they wish.

Experience all the fun and excitement of a day out at the seaside in Victorian times without leaving your classroom. We’ve selected some of our favourite Victorian photos, posters and prints from The National Archives’ huge collection of images. You’ll find below lots of suggestions for sensory activities that you can easily do in your classroom. They’ll help you use our images as a starting point to bring all the sights, sounds, smells and experiences of the Victorian seaside to life. We recommend you follow the six sections below in order, but you don’t need to use every image or do every suggested activity. Just choose or adapt the ones that are most suitable for your students. There are sensory activities, signed videos, sound files and ideas for further discussion – hopefully something for everybody. You may even come up with some ideas of your own for activities based on our images. If you do, we’d love to hear about them! This resource is suitable for students working from P1 to KS2. P Scale links: English (Speaking and listening) Geography History Music

The aim of this lesson is to get students to engage with original documents relating to prison hulks. Students will look at various records relating to the 15-year old James Butler and more generally in relation to the physical conditions on board. By interpreting these documents you can discover how criminal justice system actually worked in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They will also form an appreciation of the conditions on board prison hulks.

From the sealing of Magna Carta, the coming of the Armada, the Great Fire of London, a Christmas ceasefire on the Western Front in 1914 to Decimalisation in 1971, this selection of sources, based on records held at The National Archives, can be used in the primary classroom to support the National Curriculum element ‘significant events’ beyond living memory. The collection is by no means exhaustive, but contains some of the popular choices and other suggestions for teaching this topic. We hope to add to the collection over time. In addition, we have provided links to other useful resources for ‘significant’ events. The sources can be used within any scheme of work which is based on developing a sense of chronology where pupils can see that a particular ‘significant event’ fits into a time frame. Again working with sources in this way will help pupils to register similarities and differences between aspects of life between periods, for example comparing the Great Exhibition of 1851 with the Festival of Britain in 1951. Other ‘events’ sources can be used to consider questions of what we are remembering and why? Have things always been the same? Why have some things changed?

This collection of documents relating to the lives of the Victorians is aimed at any teacher or student engaged in a local study of the Victorian period. The sources could be used to help provide a sense of period and show pupils the type of sources they may encounter when looking at material in their local archive, museum or record office. The collection includes pictures, drawings, maps, photographs, advertisements, reports, census pages, letters etc.

Magna Carta - an interactive learning resource from The National Archives and UK Parliament enable independent student-led enquiry useing an interactive platform and video characters to engage students with original thirteenth century documents to investigate why Magna Carta was issued and reissued at four points in time: 1215; 1225; 1265 and 1297. Guided by the famous monk chronicler, Matthew Paris, students travel around the country and through time to interview key characters and investigate original documents to decide for themselves why Magna Carta was, and remains, such an important document. You can find the interactive resource on our Education website (linked to our shop).

The purpose of this document collection is to allow students and teachers to develop their own questions and lines of historical enquiry. A possible enquiry question would be: 'What was Britain's response to the child refugee problem in Nazi occupied countries?' Again, these sources could be used to support school programmes which use survivor testimony. Alternatively, teachers may wish to use the collection to develop their own resources or to &'curate&'; their own 'exhibition&'.

Medieval women’s lives were as varied as they are today, but unlike today, most women (and men) lived in the countryside and worked the land on what were known as manors, estates on which tenants rented their properties from the lord and often performed services for him at harvest time. Women can also be found living and working in towns and cities, or in religious communities. There were extremely rich and powerful women, such as queens and noblewomen, but there were also countless ordinary women, whose names we do not always know, who emerge from the archives. Use this lesson to find out about their lives in medieval England and Ireland from records held at The National Archives.

The purpose of this document collection is to allow students and teachers to develop their own questions and lines of historical enquiry on Attlee’s Britain, 1945-1951. The documents themselves are arranged according to theme, so that sources are grouped together rather than following a strict chronological order. Some of the themes include: the economy; rationing; housing, the welfare state, the National Health Service, and the nationalisation of coal, railways and electricity.

This lesson could be used as part of a teaching programme for any of the thematic studies for the GCSE history courses relating to the study of Warfare and British society or Power and Authority. It explores the stories of some of those women whose lives were changed by the English Civil Wars. The documents reveal that they played a variety of roles, a few of which may surprise us. Throughout history, wartime has impacted on all different types of people. The lives and experiences of women are sometimes harder to gauge, particularly further back in time. However, it is possible to discover more about the important roles that women had in these wars and in others. It is also important to include different types of people: men and women, young and old, rich and poor, when we study history. The lives and experiences of ordinary people help us to understand what it might have been like to live through war then as well as now.

This lesson provides pupils with an opportunity to question the historical importance of Magna Carta. It focuses on the 1215 version of Magna Carta and the political context of its creation. At the end of the lesson pupils will have gathered information that can be used to write a short piece on whether they consider the 1215 version of Magna Carta to be either: A collection of complaints and grumbles by the barons which only had benefits for them? or An important statement of key principles about how the king can rule and that had benefits for everyone in England? This lesson is the third in a sequence of three designed to be used with the BETT Awards 2016 and Medea award 2016 winning Magna Carta resource website. These lessons include PowerPoint presentations, teacher’s notes and other material for use in classrooms. The lesson resource website guides students through medieval history and documents with the help of reenactors as students create their own digital chronicle of the creation of Magna Carta.

This document collection allows students and teachers to develop their own lines of historical enquiry or historical questions using original documents on this period of history. Students could work with a group of sources which identifies different themes – for example, loyalty, bravery, motivation, radicalism or sedition within the Indian army. They also could consider how the experience of the Indian army affected imperial relations or assess the contribution of the Indian Army to the First World War. We hope that the breadth of the collection allows such flexibility and offers students the chance to develop their powers of evaluation and analysis and support their course work. Also, teachers can use the collection to develop their own resources or encourage students to ‘curate’ their own ‘exhibition’ of the most significant documents on the topic. The pdf holds our teachers notes, curriculum connections and a link to the 25 document collection on The National Archives website.

This lesson treats the well-known story of evacuation from the perspectives of: - how people in the country perceived evacuees - how evacuees perceived the country The children from the city experienced a totally new way of life in the country. For the people in the country, too, having so many outsiders coming into their area was a major event. These sources will show what each side thought of the evacuation.

Despite ruling so long ago, Edgar’s reign is still visible in our lives today. It was during Edgar’s rule that England was divided into shires and hundreds for local governance. His coronation is the earliest to be described in detail and has formed the template for all coronations of English Royalty to this day. This lesson provides pupils with a glimpse of Anglo-Saxon society through one of the oldest documents looked after by The National Archives. The document is not part of our standard collection of royal and governmental documents preserved for administrative purposes, but was instead presented to us for safekeeping in 1868. This document is a charter, a formal statement of grant, making the recipient Ælfhere thane of a small area of what is now Devon. Pupils can examine the content of the charter to recognise the influence of the King and the Church over the land and its people. Pupils could research Anglo-Saxon life to discover what the land could be used for, in terms of farming and woodland crafts. Pupils can consider the rights of the King to use land he has granted to others for his own purposes as described in the Charter, and why this would be necessary during the Anglo-Saxon period.

There are 6 galleries in this Exhibition, each containing a number of case studies. Each Case Study is designed so that it can be used as a ‘stand alone’ item in one or two classroom sessions. However, each Case Study in a Gallery is linked to form a more coherent area of research. This has been done to give students and teachers the maximum amount of flexibility. The Case Studies in each Gallery are linked together to allow students to answer the ‘Big Question’. Details of the Big Question can be found on the Introduction to the Gallery Page and on each source page. This resource has been archived as the interactive parts no longer work. You can still use the rest of it for information, tasks or research. Please note that it has not been updated since its creation in 2009. You can find other archived resources similar to this one in our ‘Topic Sites’ section on our Education website.

This collection of documents introduces students and teachers to the reign of Elizabeth I through the original State Papers held at The National Archives. They have been selected and introduced by eminent historian of the period, Tracy Borman. Students and teachers can use the documents to develop their own questions and explore their own lines of historical enquiry on different aspects of Elizabeth’s reign including the marriage question and succession, her style of monarchy, religious and foreign policy, or her relationship with Mary, Queen of Scots. The documents offer students a chance to develop their powers of evaluation and analysis and support their course work. Alternatively, teachers may wish to use the collection to develop their own resources or encourage students to ‘curate’ their own ‘exhibition’ of the most significant sources on the topic. All documents are supported with some contextual information. Transcripts are provided and more difficult vocabulary is explained in square brackets. Updated - Now with ZIP file of all documents to download.

The National Archives has created a set of resources for use in secondary level school assemblies to mark the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement which ended the conflict in Northern Ireland. A 7-minute video gives an overview of the conflict and the peace process that brought it to an end, plus details about what the Agreement did and the results of it. This can be used as part of an assembly presentation which should take around 15-20 minutes depending on the amount of time allowed for discussion at the beginning about what students know already about Northern Ireland and the Agreement. There are additional resources designed to embed knowledge about the Agreement and support student discussion about how it successfully brought an end to the violence and established a new era of peace in Northern Ireland.