British Living Standards

Teacher-scholar scheme

The history of twentieth century living standards is of interest to the wider community, but especially to pupils studying the history curriculum. The BLS project team, together with The National Archives, ran a teacher-scholar scheme. This provided a number of history teachers across the UK with the opportunity to engage with the project’s findings, informing their teaching of British history in secondary schools. During a weekend study break the teachers were shown how to analyse the major household surveys alongside a variety of qualitative records which often contain more detail about the experience of living in twentieth-century Britain. A separate weekend of fieldtrips allowed teachers to explore further questions about life for working families. Using the knowledge and skills developed during their time with the project team the teachers wrote a reflexive essay and created lesson plans that are now available from The National Archives education pages.

 For the final report on our teacher-scholar scheme, please click here.