UCL Beacon School in Holocaust Education
Highfields proudly announced its Beacon School in Holocaust Education status in 2022, when it was selected as one of 23 schools nationally to work in partnership with the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education during the 2022-23 academic year. As a dedicated alumni school, we continue to be committed to ensuring Holocaust education remains central to the ethos and vision of our school, enhancing teaching and learning about the Holocaust, raising student achievement, and strengthening SMSC provision.
The Beacon School programme, which celebrated a decade of partnerships with schools in 2023, seeks to ensure that young people have secure knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust by supporting schools in their development to become centres of educational excellence.
Developed in school by lead teacher Miss J Tappenden (Head of History), our programme aims to provide students with a secure historical knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust, as well as playing a central role in personal development. Through knowledge and understanding, students are empowered to challenge generational cycles of discrimination and prejudice. This is achieved through a twelve-week programme of study in Year 9 history, a tutor time programme across Years 7-12 to support school wide participation of Holocaust Memorial Day (27th January), Refugee week (June), Genocide Prevention Day (9th December) and Human Rights Day (10th December) and several extracurricular enrichment opportunities. These include:
‘The Holocaust, Their Family, Me and Us’ – An enrichment project devised by Nicola Wetherall MBE of Royal Wootton Bassett Academy
In-school visits from external agencies such as The Anne Frank Trust
Bi-annual trip to Berlin and Krakow, inclusive of visits to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and Auschwitz
History Book Club
To learn more about our work as a Beacon School and associated projects, please click below to view each section.
The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education is the world leader for research informed teacher and student education. Established in 2008 by the Pears Foundation, who identified teacher training as a priority, they have worked with other 25,000 teachers to deepen knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust. They offer an extensive CPD programme for teachers and a range of classroom resources.
Since its conception in 2012, over 200 schools have worked with the centre to become Beacon Schools in Holocaust Education.
Click HERE to learn more about UCL centre for Holocaust Education.
Devised by Nicola Wetherall MBE as an immersive, enrichment project ‘The Holocaust, Their Family, Me and Us’ is based on the award-winning documentary series “My Family, The Holocaust and Me” wherein Robert Rinder MBE helped his mother Angela Cohen MBE and fellow British Jewish families to trace the story of their family. The documentary features stories from across Europe and considers both the deeply personal history and its national relevance today.
The project aims to support students in developing their in-depth knowledge and understanding of one of four stories told through the documentary, allowing students a deeper understanding of the events and significance of the Holocaust through the lens of one family history. In addition, students are tasked with a series of activities and challenges which encourage them to consider the significance of the Holocaust in both their individual lives and the wider school context.
The project has been devised with the full support and blessing of the families involved, and as such offers students the unique opportunity to view documents, photographs and other sources which were discovered and continue to be found as the families delve into their history. Students are also given frequent opportunities to engage in online sessions with the families and other people involved in the making of the documentary, giving them the opportunity to ask their own questions.
The project first launched in school on 9th November 2022. Students followed the story of Angela and Robert. On Holocaust Memorial Day 2023, students made an important pledge to the family.
Click HERE to learn more about #HtFMeUs
The Anne Frank Trust is an educational charity that empowers 9–15-year-olds to challenge all forms of prejudice, inspired by the life and work of Anne Frank. Founded in 1991, they have extensive experience working with young people. They offer a range of free learning experiences for primary and secondary state schools.
In July 2023, twenty Year 9 students worked with the trust over a period of two days to become peer educators as part of their ‘History for Today’ programme. Students developed expertise in the life and work of Anne Frank, and the confidence and oracy skills to become young curators of a physical exhibition which was on display for two weeks in our lecture theatre. They expertly and confidently provided tours to their peers in Years 7-9 as well as teachers.
Click HERE to learn more about The Anne Frank Trust.
Click HERE to learn more about the life of Anne Frank.
Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) takes place every year on 27th January, the date that marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. On this international day of remembrance, we remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed by the Nazis from targeted communities such as the Roma and Sinti people, and those in more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
Each year HMD is marked by thousands of people across the UK who aim to learn more from the past to safeguard the future.
In the week of Holocaust Memorial Day 2023, students from across years 7-12 participated in form time activities with a focus on ‘Ordinary People’. Their reflections from the week were collected and placed onto a ‘thought tree’ in reception.
The theme for HMD 2024 is ‘Fragility of Freedom’. Each year at 4pm on 27th January, people are invited to ‘light the darkness’ in a national act of remembrance. Many people light candles in their homes, and national landmarks and buildings are illuminated in purple lighting.
Click HERE to learn more about HMD.
In 2023, Refugee week celebrated its 25th anniversary in the UK. Founded in 1998, Refugee week celebrates the contributions, resilience and creativity of refugees and those seeking sanctuary in the week of World Refugee Day on 20th June.
It seeks to encourage understanding of why people are displaced, and the challenges they face when seeking safety. The theme for 2023 was ‘Compassion’.
Students at History Book Club have been encouraged to think about ‘compassion’ through a range of historical fiction books aimed at young readers who want to better understand the challenges facing those who are displaced. A great place to start is ‘Refugee’ by Alan Gratz (reading age 9-14) that compares the experiences of a young Jewish boy in Nazi Germany, a young girl in Cuba during the 1990s, and a teenager living in Syria in 2015. Tom Palmer’s ‘After the War’ (reading age 10+) is excellent for those who want to learn more about the experiences of Jewish children displaced by the Nazi regime.
Click HERE to learn more about Refugee Week.
9th November marks Genocide Prevention Day, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 as the ‘International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime’.
2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention), which signifies the international community’s commitment to ‘never again’.
The term genocide was first coined in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish decent. In 1948 his definition was adopted by the UN Genocide Convention, who further defined genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group … " including:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Understanding the root causes of genocide is crucial to its prevention. Watch our 2023 Genocide Prevention Pledge to learn about the 10 stages of genocide:
Click HERE to learn more about Genocide Prevention Day.
Click HERE to learn more about Raphael Lemkin.
Every year on 10th December the international community marks Human Rights Day, the anniversary of one of the world’s most groundbreaking pledges: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHC). The Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10th December 1948 and sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.
2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the UDHC, and the theme for this year is ‘Dignity, Freedom and Justice for All’. To mark this landmark anniversary, a youth advisory group has been established. The ‘Youth and Human Rights 75’ initiative seeks to recognise the contribution young people have made at the forefront of human rights activism.
Click HERE to learn more about Human Rights Day.