Key Stage 1 history · Significant individuals

KS1 significant people: Rosa Parks, Davison, Nightingale and Seacole

In Years 1 and 2, children learn about people from the past who stood up for fairness or cared for others, and they compare their lives. Schools often choose from Rosa Parks and Emily Davison, who campaigned for change, and Mary Seacole, Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell, who nursed and helped others. Children listen to their stories, put them in order on a timeline, and practise answering questions using pictures and sources.

Campaigners and carers, explained

The National Curriculum asks children in Key Stage 1 to learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who contributed to national and international achievements, and to compare aspects of life in different periods. The names are only suggestions and are non-statutory, so schools choose. Many teach a pair of people, for example Rosa Parks with Emily Davison, or Florence Nightingale with Mary Seacole. Some schools teach Edith Cavell as well, and some pick entirely different people.

Rosa Parks was born in 1913 in the United States. On 1 December 1955, in the city of Montgomery in Alabama, she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, which the unfair rules of the time said she had to do because she was Black. She was arrested. Black people in Montgomery then refused to use the buses for more than a year, and in late 1956 the highest court in the United States ruled that keeping Black and white passengers apart on buses was against the law. Emily Davison was a suffragette. The suffragettes campaigned in Britain in the early 1900s for women to be allowed to vote. Emily died in 1913 after being struck by the king’s horse at a race at Epsom. Women over thirty who met certain rules were first allowed to vote in general elections in 1918, and all women over twenty-one in 1928. For young children, teachers usually keep the focus on speaking up when something is unfair.

Florence Nightingale (1820 to 1910) was an English nurse. In 1854, during the Crimean War, she went to a military hospital at Scutari, in what is now Turkey, where she and her team made the wards cleaner and the care better. She later worked to improve hospitals and to train nurses. Mary Seacole (1805 to 1881) was born in Jamaica and learned healing skills from her mother. She was turned down when she offered to help as a nurse in the Crimea, so she travelled there at her own expense and set up a place near the fighting where soldiers could rest, eat and be looked after. Edith Cavell (1865 to 1915) was a British nurse who worked in Brussels during the First World War. She cared for wounded soldiers from both sides and helped others to escape, and she was shot by the German army in 1915. Teachers tell this part very gently, if at all, with the emphasis on her bravery.

The skills matter as much as the stories. Children place these people on a timeline and see that they did not all live at the same time: Seacole and Nightingale in the 1850s, Davison and Cavell in the 1910s, Parks in the 1950s. They compare a hospital then and now, or a bus journey then and now. They also practise asking and answering questions using parts of a story, a photograph or a drawing as evidence, for example “How do we know Florence Nightingale made hospitals cleaner?” or “What can this picture tell us?”

Words your child will hear

Campaigner: Someone who works over a long time to change something they think is unfair.
Suffragette: A woman who campaigned in the early 1900s for women to have the right to vote.
Segregation: Keeping groups of people apart by rule, for example on buses or in schools. It is unfair and is now against the law.
Boycott: Refusing to use or buy something as a way of protesting.
Crimean War: A war in the 1850s in which British soldiers fought far from home and many fell ill or were wounded.
Source: A picture, story, object or letter that helps us find out about the past.
Chronological order: In the order that things happened, with the earliest first.

What the National Curriculum says

The programme of study for Key Stage 1 says:

Pupils should be taught about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements, some should be used to compare aspects of life in different periods
Pupils should know where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods.
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.

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

A worked example: comparing two nurses

What was the same and what was different about Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole?

Collect the facts from the stories and pictures you have heard and seen. Nightingale: English, went to a hospital at Scutari in 1854, made it cleaner, later helped train nurses. Seacole: born in Jamaica, paid for her own journey to the Crimea, looked after soldiers near the fighting.
Sort out what is the same. Both were women who cared for wounded and sick soldiers in the Crimean War in the 1850s. Both worked in difficult places far from home. Both are remembered today.
Sort out what is different. Nightingale was sent by the government to a hospital, with a team of nurses. Seacole was turned down, so she paid her own way there and ran a place near the battlefield. Nightingale grew up in England and Seacole in Jamaica, and they worked in different ways.
Say why people remember them. Nightingale changed how hospitals were run, so that more people got better. Seacole showed that you can help others even when people tell you not to.

Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole both looked after soldiers in the Crimean War. Nightingale was sent by the government to run the nursing at an army hospital, and Seacole paid to travel there and looked after soldiers near the fighting. We remember both of them because they helped other people when it was hard to do so.

Common mistakes and how to help

“Rosa Parks sat down because she was tired”

Some picture books simplify the story to “a tired woman who wouldn’t move”.

What helps: Explain that she was already an experienced campaigner for fair treatment, and that she was tired of being treated unfairly, not tired from her day. The bus protest that followed needed thousands of people to walk, share lifts and keep going for over a year.

One person changed everything on their own

Stories about a single person are easy to tell, so the other people who helped get left out.

What helps: Ask “Who else helped?” after each story. Nightingale had a team of nurses, the Montgomery protest was a whole community, and the suffragettes were many thousands of women.

Thinking all these people lived at the same time

At this age, “in the past” is one big place, and the dates are large numbers.

What helps: Use a timeline and ask “Who came first?” and “Who was alive when Granny was a child?” Parks is the most recent of the group. Seacole and Nightingale lived about a hundred years before her.

“Emily Davison won women the vote”

Her death was dramatic and well known, so it can sound like the end of the story.

What helps: Say that many people campaigned for years, and that women first voted in a general election in 1918, five years after Emily had died. Her story is one part of a bigger one.

How to help at home

Read a picture biography together. Borrow a children’s book about one of these people from the library. Stop at a picture and ask “What can you see? What do you think is happening?” before you read the words.
Talk about fairness. Ask your child about a rule that seemed unfair at school, or in a game, and what they did. Talk about different ways of speaking up that are kind and calm, like the way campaigners acted.
Say thank you to a carer. Make a card for a nurse, doctor, carer or someone who looks after others in your family or street. Ask your child what the person does and why it matters.
Compare hospitals then and now. Look at a picture of a hospital ward from the 1850s, if you can find one in a book, and talk about how it differs from a hospital today. Notice beds, light, cleanliness and who is looking after the patients.
Ask an older relative. Ask a grandparent or neighbour whether they know the story of any of these people, and what they remember about nurses or buses when they were young. People’s memories are a source too.