Founder and author of Keystage history
Neil Thompson is the founder and author of Keystage history. A former history teacher, county history adviser and Ofsted inspector, Neil has spent more than 30 years working in history education.
He founded Keystage history in 2008 and continues to write and quality assure the site’s teaching resources and professional guidance.
Neil’s work is informed by an unusually broad range of experience: as a classroom teacher, subject leader, adviser, inspector and trainer, as well as through decades spent working directly with schools.
More than 30 years in history education
Neil began his career as a history teacher and spent 12 years teaching in secondary schools.
During his time in the classroom, he led two history departments and was also a member of a school Senior Leadership Team.
He subsequently spent 18 years working in history advisory and inspection roles in Hampshire, supporting hundreds of primary and secondary schools.
This gave Neil the opportunity to work directly with teachers and subject leaders on curriculum planning, teaching and learning, assessment, progression and the leadership of history.
2,300+ history lessons observed
One of the most important influences on Neil’s work has been the opportunity to see history being taught in a very wide range of classrooms.
Over the course of his career, Neil has observed more than 2,300 history lessons.
Seeing so many different teachers, pupils, schools and approaches to teaching history has provided an extensive bank of practical experience about what works well, what engages pupils and where difficulties commonly arise.
Many of the approaches found on Keystage history have their origins in excellent practice Neil has encountered in classrooms and subsequently developed and refined for use by other teachers.
Inspection and advisory experience
Neil has carried out more than 60 national Ofsted inspections and has extensive experience of evaluating the quality of history teaching, learning and curriculum provision.
During his advisory career, he worked with more than 300 primary schools and 70 secondary schools, supporting teachers, subject leaders and senior leaders with the development of history.
His wider work has also involved teacher training, curriculum development, educational publishing and work with national educational organisations.
Creating Keystage history
Neil founded Keystage history in 2008 after recognising that teachers faced two recurring problems.
The first was finding genuinely high-quality history lessons and activities. Although there was plenty of material available, it could be difficult to find resources that combined historical rigour, appropriate challenge and activities that would genuinely engage pupils.
The second was finding practical, authoritative guidance on how to teach history well.
Keystage history was created to address both.
Rather than simply providing downloadable worksheets, Neil developed lessons around carefully structured historical enquiries and key questions, supported by the resources and guidance teachers need to make them work successfully in the classroom.
An approach based on historical thinking
Central to Neil’s approach is the belief that learning history should involve much more than remembering information about the past.
Knowledge matters, but pupils also need to learn progressively how to think historically.
That includes learning how to:
- ask and investigate worthwhile historical questions
- use and evaluate historical evidence
- understand cause and consequence
- recognise change and continuity
- make judgements about historical significance
- understand different interpretations of the past
- construct increasingly sophisticated historical explanations
These principles underpin the lessons and professional guidance throughout Keystage history.
Written and quality assured by Neil
Neil remains closely involved with the content of Keystage history.
The teaching resources and professional guidance on the site are written and quality assured by Neil, drawing on his experience of teaching, inspecting, advising schools and observing thousands of history lessons.
This also allows Keystage history to maintain a consistent approach across different topics and key stages, rather than operating as a collection of unrelated resources from multiple contributors.
From EYFS and KS1 through KS2, KS3, KS4 and KS5, the aim is to demonstrate how pupils’ historical knowledge and thinking can become progressively more sophisticated.
Supporting today’s history teachers
Neil continues to develop new resources and professional guidance for Keystage history and to review existing materials in light of developments in history education and the curriculum.
His focus remains firmly on practical classroom application: helping teachers turn sound principles of history education into lessons and curricula that work with real pupils in real schools.
The purpose is the same as when Keystage history was established in 2008: to help teachers provide pupils with engaging, rigorous and memorable history education.
Connect with Neil
You can also find Neil Thompson on LinkedIn.