Are you delivering rigorous and inspirational history provision throughout your school? Do you want to improve your provision using a structured and tested framework? Look no further than the Historical Association Quality Mark.
It’s the perfect way not only to gain recognition for the fantastic achievements of your staff and pupils, but also create a legacy of high-quality history at your school for years to come.
Over the course of 12 months the Quality Mark can help develop history teaching and learning, leadership, curriculum, achievement and enrichment across your school, and much more.
Simply fulfil the criteria using our step by step online module and apply for school-based assessment when you are ready, and all with the ongoing support of the HA and your assessor.
In short, this is professional development at its best.
Carried out by a trusted body, the Quality Mark provides a framework for encouraging creative and critical thinking about history in the school, encouraging you to audit, reflect, develop and reflect again towards improved provision.
It is also personalised in adapting a set of criteria to the particular context, and more cost effective than a general training event.
The best evidence for the way schools have gained through the process is the growing number of positive testimonials from the over 40 primary schools that have already completed the process.
Chris from Sketchley Hill Primary School in Leicestershire offers just one example of the thoughtful reflection about delivery of history which also makes ambitious demands of pupils’ thinking:
Before setting out on the Quality Mark project, we felt that history already had a high-profile throughout the school. As a subject leader I was lucky that the staff and pupils were enthusiastic about all things historical. The opportunity to complete the QM process would help us to delve deeper into how we as teachers were delivering history and how we could improve our existing practice, especially in terms of historical concepts such as enquiry.
During the year long process itself, the most difficult aspect to deal with was the fact that as a school we were also dealing with the build up to an important OFSTED inspection. It would have been so easy to focus on the core subjects during this time, so it was crucial for us to keep our curriculum balanced and for me to plan carefully for the rest of the year, in order to meet the HA Quality Mark criteria.
Our biggest success has to be the link that we have developed with our local history society. As a result, we now have a long term connection to people with an interest in history in the community.
The impact of the process on the school has been a highly positive one. Obviously, gaining the award has been good for morale, after a difficult and stressful couple of years for the staff. It has also shown us that there is life outside of ‘English’ and ‘Maths’!
As history leader, I now have a detailed understanding of the teaching and learning in history that occurs at Sketchley Hill, to a depth that perhaps other leaders do not. This has meant that I have been able to clearly identify future areas for development of the subject, with the aim of improving our silver award to gold.
The Quality Mark is open to all school settings. Find out more and read other case studies on The Historical Association website.
