About Keystage History and Neil Thompson

About Keystage history

Keystage history was established by Neil Thompson in 2007 as a one-stop website for teachers looking to improve the learning experience in history for all their pupils. Neil's 12 years' of history teaching and 18 years of advising primary and secondary schools had shown him that there were two pressing needs that existed for history teachers, at all levels. The first was simply to have just one place where you could immediately, and reliably, find high quality learning resources on all relevant history topics. There is no shortage of ‘stuff’ for history teachers to use, but finding the highest quality is far more difficult. Where can you go for a fully-resourced set of lessons judged as outstanding? The second need was for a source of advice on leading and teaching history that was at once both comprehensive and authoritative and also covered the 5-19 age group.

KSH is about professional development, not quick fixes. You can see from the photographs of children at work, and from the outstanding lesson write-ups from a wide variety of teachers, that this site has been created by someone who spends much of his working life in history classrooms. Neil is simply passing to you the fruits of his professional experience and the very best History he has seen in over 2,300 'lessons'..

About Neil Thompson

Neil started writing this site in 2007 having spent 18 years as county inspector/adviser for history in Hampshire. During this time Neil transformed the quality of teaching in Hampshire 5-19, giving it a national reputation for excellence. Part of this success was due to Neil’s determination to support teachers at both primary and secondary level with practical support in the form of teaching and learning packs. These helped teachers raise their game and made the learning far more exiting.

Neil has also carried out over 50 OFSTED national inspections, giving him an incredibly broad view of history teaching across the country. As the reputation of his work spread, Neil was asked to work as a consultant for the then QCA and wrote one of the DCSF’s training modules for the National Secondary Strategy. Recently he has was commissioned by a leading publisher to write the Teachers Resource Books for the new GCSE courses. He also wrote primary history material for the BBC and is a consultant for numerous organisations and series editor for a series of KS2 books on the local history of all major towns.

Before coming in to advisory work Neil ran two history departments, headed up a humanities faculty and worked on a Senior Leadership Team. In his current capacity as a freelance history consultant, he continues to work with teachers from all over the country. Between January and July 2011 his work ranged from supporting history departments in large urban comprehensives and a leading independent school, to leading INSET for all history teachers in an LEA, through to running whole-school INSET in 3 London primary schools. He leads over 40 history CPD courses a year at both primary and secondary level and is in regular contact with leading history teachers.

 If you would like to read what headteachers have said about Neil's INSET provision and school improvement work, please click here for reviews.

Contact us

If you would like to contact Keystage History please click here