On Sunday 24th January 2015, the Parliamentary Education Committee published its report on Holocaust education.

Crucially the report found that too few teachers are being trained to teach the Holocaust.  Furthermore, while much of the training available to teachers is of a high standard, more also needs to be done to extend its reach to subjects other than history, such as English, Drama and PSHE.

The Committee rightly emphasises the importance of quality-assured teacher training in Holocaust education.  In the Centre’s national research, Teaching About the Holocaust in English Secondary Schools, teachers themselves identified this crucial need, but thousands are not given permission to attend our programmes as, in too many schools, the Holocaust is not a curriculum priority.

We welcome the Committee’s call for the Department for Education not only to review its funding of our teacher training, but to do much more to ensure all teachers who wish to improve their practice are able to do so.

That could be by funding the cost to schools of their staff attending quality-assured teacher training, or – even more effectively – to make teaching and learning about the Holocaust a key part of the Ofsted inspection framework.  At which point head teachers across the country will ensure their teachers attend the best training courses available.

Click on this link for a summary of the findings and to download a copy of the report.