Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support the deepest possible knowledge of the Holocaust in the education system; and how her Department supports educational visits for schools to the death camps.

The Holocaust is the only historic event which is compulsory within the current national curriculum for history at key stage 3. The government has made a commitment that the Holocaust will remain a compulsory topic in the reformed national curriculum, which will also be required teaching in academy schools when it is implemented.

Additionally, the government funds programmes to support Holocaust teaching which provide high-quality, rigorous education about the Holocaust. This includes the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz project, which gives pupils aged 16 to 18 the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The department funds teachers’ professional development in this subject through University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education. The Supporting Holocaust Survivor Testimony in Teaching programme also supports schools in using recorded Holocaust survivor testimony in their teaching.