Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps is he taking to help ensure that the genocide of Roma and Sinti peoples during the Holocaust is taught as part of the national curriculum.

The department is fully committed to Holocaust education. In recognition of its importance, the Holocaust is the only historic event which is compulsory within the national curriculum for history at key stage 3. The curriculum gives teachers and schools the freedom to decide how to teach the subject and what resources to use to support an understanding of the Holocaust, and the experiences of non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.

The department supports school pupils’ and teachers’ understanding of the Holocaust by providing funding for several programmes. This includes £500,000 in the 2021/22 financial year for University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education, which is match funded by the Pears Foundation, and £2.1 million in the 2021/22 financial year for the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz project.

As part of Holocaust education, a wide range of resources are available to help teachers explain the Nazi persecution of different groups of people. The Lessons from Auschwitz project and the knowledge and training provided by the Centre for Holocaust Education both include information and resources to support an understanding of the Holocaust, including Nazi persecution of non-Jewish groups.