In 2025, the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education began publishing findings from its latest study with almost 2,800 students. This mixed-method study, led by Dr Becky Hale, explored students’ historical knowledge and understanding about the Holocaust, where and when they had learnt about the Holocaust in school, where they encountered the Holocaust outside school (e.g. in films), what content about the Holocaust they had encountered online and how much trust they had in different sources of information.

The study also compared students’ knowledge and learning experiences in 2024/25 with students a decade earlier, drawing on data from the Centre’s 2016 student study. The 2016 study remains the largest of its kind ever conducted in the world. However, worrying trends in recent years, such as lost learning due to the pandemic and the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation online, meant it was important to conduct another student survey into students’ knowledge and understanding about the Holocaust. Moreover, the study had significant poignancy, occurring 80 years after the end of the Second World War.

Findings from the study are being released during 2025/26 in a series of research digests which will be available to download from this page.

• Digest 1: ‘Understanding attitudes, behaviours and actions during the Holocaust’ is published below.