Key Stage 1 history · Local history

KS1 local history: a guide for parents

In Years 1 and 2, children study significant events, people and places in their own locality, the area around the school or where they live. The National Curriculum does not say which ones, so every school chooses its own: a castle, a church, a mill, a canal, a shop, a flood or the school itself. Children ask questions, look at old photographs and objects, talk to older people, and learn how we find out about the past.

Local history, explained

Local history is the one part of Key Stage 1 history where the content is entirely the school’s choice. The curriculum asks children to be taught about significant historical events, people and places in their own locality. “Significant” here means important to the local area. It does not have to be famous across the country. A local baker who fed the town during a hard winter, the opening of a railway station or the story of why a street has its name can all be good topics. If you ask your child what they are studying, the answer will probably be something you can see within a short walk.

Lessons are often built around a walk or a visit. Children might go to the high street, a church, a museum or a historic building, and spot clues: dates carved over a door, old shop signs, a war memorial, a plaque on a wall or street names such as Mill Lane or Station Road. Back in the classroom they sort what they found, ask questions, and compare old and new. Teachers may invite an older person from the area to be interviewed, or bring in objects such as an old iron or school slate.

A big idea underneath the topic is that we find out about the past from different kinds of evidence, and that the past is shown in different ways. Photographs, maps, objects, buildings, newspapers and people’s memories are all sources. A painting, a statue, a museum display, a story and a model are all ways the past is represented. Children practise asking “How do we know?” and “What does this tell us?” They also learn that sources can be incomplete or disagree with each other.

Time words matter at this age. Children use past, present, old, new, before, after, a long time ago and in my grandparents’ time, and they begin to use words like decade and century. They are not expected to remember a long list of dates. They are expected to put a few events in a sensible order, to say what has changed and what has stayed the same, and to begin to ask good questions of their own. The topic also lays the groundwork for the local history study that every child does at some point in Key Stage 2.

Words your child will hear

Locality: The area around your school or where you live.
Significant: Important, so that people still remember and talk about it.
Source: Anything that helps us find out about the past, such as a photograph, map, object or memory.
Past and present: The past is what has already happened. The present is now.
Then and now: A way of comparing how something looked or worked in the past and how it does today.
Plaque: A flat sign fixed to a wall that records a person or event connected with that place.
Memory: What a person remembers about something that happened. It is a useful source but can be incomplete.

What the National Curriculum says

The programme of study for Key Stage 1 says:

Pupils should be taught about significant historical events, people and places in their own locality
Pupils should ask and answer questions, choosing and using parts of stories and other sources to show that they know and understand key features of events.
Pupils should understand some of the ways in which we find out about the past and identify different ways in which it is represented.

Objectives from the National Curriculum in England, © Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Try it: investigating the high street

How has our high street changed in about a hundred years? (The details will be different in your area; this shows how the task is done.)

Start with questions. What shops were here? How did people get about? What can we find out, and what might we never know? Writing the questions first stops the children from just looking at pictures.
Look closely at an old photograph. Clues might include horse-drawn carts and only a few motor cars, shop signs painted straight on to the walls, people wearing hats, and no traffic lights. Ask “What can you see? What time of year might it be? What is missing?”
Visit the same spot today, if possible, and look at the same view. Some buildings may still be there, with new shop fronts or different uses. Take a photograph from the same place to compare.
Sort the findings into what is the same and what is different. Roofs and upper windows may be the same, while the cars, signs and shops will have changed.
Ask an older person who remembers the street. Then think: is a memory a good source? It tells us something real, but the person may remember some things and forget others.

In the old photograph the high street had horse-drawn carts, a few cars, people on foot and shop signs painted on the walls. Today there are many more cars and different shops, but some buildings are still there, so some things have stayed the same. We found this out by looking at a photograph and the street itself, and by asking someone who remembers.

Common mistakes and how to help

“History only happens somewhere else, or to famous people”

Books and television tend to focus on kings, battles and faraway places, so the street outside feels ordinary.

What helps: Look for the small history in your own area: a plaque, an old school building, a street named after a person. Ask “Who lived here? What did they do?”

“Old photographs show that the world used to be black and white”

Early photographs were taken in black and white, and children can take that literally.

What helps: Explain that the world has always had colours, but the cameras could not record them. Ask what colour a bus or a door might have been.

Calling everything old “Victorian” or “from the olden days”

Children group anything that isn’t modern into one big pile of the past.

What helps: Ask “Was that before or after Grandma was born?” Use a few helpful markers: your own childhood, your parents’ and grandparents’, and “before anyone alive today”.

Believing a building has always been used for the same thing

A building looks like a shop or a house now, so children assume that is all it ever was.

What helps: Look at one local building and ask what it might have been used for before. Many buildings have been a shop, a school, a cinema or a chapel at different times.

How to help at home

Take a history walk. Walk with an adult around your street or local centre, staying on pavements and away from roads. Look for dates on buildings, old signs, plaques and street names, and ask what each one might tell you.
Interview someone older. Help your child prepare three questions for a grandparent, neighbour or friend: what was this street like when you were little? What shops were here? How did you get to school? Write down or record the answers.
Make a then-and-now picture. Find an old photograph of your area, in a local library, a family album or a local history group’s collection, and draw or photograph the same view today. Ask your child to point out three things that are the same and three that are different.
Visit the library or a local museum. Many libraries and small museums keep old maps, photographs and objects from your area. Let your child choose one thing to look at closely and ask questions about it.
Talk about your own family’s place. Ask where each generation of your family lived, went to school or worked. A simple family-and-place timeline helps children see that ordinary people are part of history.

Leads on to

Key Stage 2: A local history study

Everything in Key Stage 1 history

Updated 20 October 2026.