Educators at The National Archives have won a prestigious prize for their history workshops.
The team, all trained teachers, won The Sandford Award for Heritage Learning 2025. They bring alive history using maps, drawings, wills, censuses, illustrations and other records from around 26 million documents held at The National Archives in Kew.
Sessions based on the National Curriculum and history exam specifications allow primary, secondary school, GCSE and A-level students to see and handle original documents from the past.
Rachel Hillman, Deputy Head of Education and Outreach at The National Archives said: “We’re thrilled to have our education and informal learning programmes recognised in this way. The Sandford Award is a prestigious accreditation and reflects the high standard of our education provision at The National Archives.”
An assessor for the Heritage Education Trust, which awards the prize, said: “The two most important resources of the education service are firstly the astonishing range of authentic records available and secondly, the highly skilled educators who help pupils interpret them at the appropriate level.”
The assessor observed a primary school class of 30 pupils, including some with ADHD and SEN, taking part in a Great Fire of London: Examine the Evidence session. Students used a survey map of Pudding Lane in 1665 to help them work out the wind direction and took part in a human chain with a fire bucket to appreciate how difficult it would have been to try to put out the fire.
Year 10 pupils from a secondary school were observed in a Medicine and the Western Front workshop, in which they analysed authentic medical documents relating to soldiers’ battle injuries in the First World War.
The assessor noted “Using actual letters and documents written in the past, pupils are helped by the educators to feel connected with the person who wrote it, an emotive experience which leads them to more research and understanding.”
Schools can book workshops online through our education web-pages at: For teachers – The National Archives or [email protected]
