About Keystage history

High-quality history teaching, built on classroom experience

Keystage history provides high-quality history teaching resources, lesson enquiries, curriculum guidance and professional support for teachers and schools from EYFS through to KS5.

Founded in 2008 and still authored by Neil Thompson to help teachers find something that can be surprisingly difficult to locate: genuinely effective history teaching ideas that combine historical rigour with practical classroom experience.

Rather than simply providing worksheets or collections of activities, Keystage history focuses on how history can be taught successfully. Our resources are designed to help pupils develop secure historical knowledge while progressively learning how to think historically.

What makes Keystage history different?

There is no shortage of history material available online. The challenge for teachers is finding resources they can trust to provide appropriate challenge, strong historical thinking and activities that will genuinely engage pupils.

Keystage history has been developed from Neil’s extensive experience of seeing history taught in real classrooms.

Our lessons are built around carefully chosen historical enquiries and key questions. They are designed not simply to tell pupils about the past, but to encourage them to investigate evidence, explore interpretations, explain causes and consequences, identify change and continuity and make informed judgements about historical significance.

Just as importantly, resources are created with the realities of teaching in mind. They are intended to save teachers time while providing a strong model of what high-quality history teaching can look like.

More than lesson resources

Keystage history is designed to support both classroom teaching and the wider development of history within a school.

Alongside fully resourced lessons and historical enquiries, the site provides extensive guidance and practical support for:

• curriculum planning and sequencing
• teaching and learning
• assessment and progression
• historical enquiry and disciplinary knowledge
• subject leadership
• monitoring and improving history
• professional development

This means teachers can use Keystage history not only to find an individual lesson, but also to help develop a coherent and ambitious history curriculum.

Supporting teachers from EYFS to KS5

Keystage history provides resources and professional guidance across EYFS, KS1, KS2, KS3, KS4 and KS5.

Our materials recognise that excellent history teaching looks different at different ages. From introducing young children to ideas such as old and new, then and now, through to sophisticated historical enquiry and interpretation at secondary level, the emphasis is on appropriate progression.

At every stage, the aim is the same: to help teachers make history engaging, rigorous and memorable.

Founded by Neil Thompson

Keystage history was founded by Neil Thompson, a former history teacher, county history adviser and Ofsted inspector with more than 30 years’ experience in history education.

Neil is the principal author of Keystage history and writes and quality assures the site’s teaching resources and professional guidance.

His approach draws on decades spent working directly with teachers, subject leaders and schools and on observing more than 2,300 history lessons.

This experience is fundamental to Keystage history. The resources on the site are not anonymous teaching materials: they are informed by extensive experience of seeing what works in history classrooms and understanding the challenges teachers and subject leaders face.

[Find out more about Neil Thompson →]

Our aim

Our aim is straightforward: to help teachers teach history exceptionally well.

We want teachers to have access to resources they can trust, ideas that excite pupils and professional guidance that helps them continually improve their history provision.

Ultimately, the measure of a good history resource is what happens when it reaches the classroom: whether it generates curiosity, encourages pupils to think, deepens their understanding and helps them develop a lasting interest in the past.

That is what Keystage history has been created to support.