On Friday 15th May 2026, the ESIS History team headed to Newcastle for the Historical Association Annual Conference – the place to be to hear all the latest UK curriculum thinking for History teachers. It was great to be able to present the findings and recommendations from our ‘Great History Heist’ report that was published earlier this year.
With teachers, publishers and exam boards in the room, there were some hard self-reflections when we presented the current state of female representation in the curriculum, specifications and assessments.
Teaching the true scope of women’s place in History
Whilst five of the recommendations for change in the report involve institutional level reform, our workshop focused on the seven ways to transform teaching approaches to make improvements at the classroom level. With beautifully arranged worksheets on the group tables organised by time period, Sasha walked the room through the ways our mapping document can be used as a starting point for change and to think in new ways about historical enquiries.
Firstly, groups were asked to read through their section of our mapping document and highlight characters from their given time period that they had not discussed before when usually teaching the topic. This showed how departments can audit their schemes of work and look for integration of more named women into enquiries that are already being taught. We also looked at how enquiry questions themselves can be reframed with a woman at the centre and to consider how this might open out a broader range of thoughts and questions on the period discussed.
After choosing some new characters, groups were asked to think about the specific structures that may have limited the level of agency for these different women. This showed how even with political or military topics that may seem to exclude women, there are ways that lessons can help to explain legal and cultural forces that hindered the participation of women.
We then showed various different source databases to help include women’s stories and to think how to ‘read against the grain’ when looking at any source to potentially uncover hidden voices. We also emphasised the importance of modern female scholarship with a brilliant slide showcasing just some of the great books by historians that link to the National Curriculum that can easily be used in classrooms.
Finally, we gave ten examples of our biography templates which show teaching themes, exam specification links, accessible source material and further reading. We hope that teachers will get in touch to collaborate with us on the women they are already using and help grow this bank of useful resources.
For those who have Historical Association membership and attended the conference but not our session or who purchased a recordings package, you can view and listen to Sasha’s presentation through your HA profile.
