Local Heritage Learning Resource Production

Many teachers do not live in, or are not from, the areas surrounding the schools in which they teach. With the many conflicting demands on their time they sometimes struggle to develop a curriculum which reaches its full potential to embed local heritage and to connect national stories to local children. Many teachers responsible for developing parts of the curriculum which could explore local heritage are not subject specialists, and although heritage is about far more than history, inevitably it falls to the history co-ordinator to oversee this. Heritage is to be found in the housing estates, high streets, parks, landscapes, places of worship and business parks. Many children miss out and grow up disconnected from their heritage, with no sense of how it fits into the national story. As history is a key part of the curriculum, both at primary and secondary level, it is important that children’s early experience of history is meaningful and relevant.