Education Service

This service is widely recognised, both in the UK and around the world, as a leading provider of resources and expertise in the field of heritage education. Its aim is to encourage the wider use of the historic environment in formal education, whether in primary schools or at further and adult levels. It supports the whole spectrum of EH's work, encouraging free educational visits to our own historic properties, and also building awareness and understanding of conservation issues and archaeology.

Our work in archaeology is wide ranging, from publications and videos to on-site activity. To help school pupils understand what archaeology is all about, 2 series of videos have been produced. The Archaeological Detectives programmes use a dramatic approach, starring teams of children who discover evidence for themselves by investigating real situations. We have recently established the Archaeology at Work series, which takes a more documentary look at modern archaeological methods and equipment, from rescue excavation and fieldwork to urban surveys and scientific techniques. Investigating towns, released in 1995, was shot on location in Much Wenlock, Shrewsbury and Liverpool. Other videos have covered sites such as Flag Fen, important discoveries like The Ferriby Boats, or church and cathedral archaeology.

We continue to work with the Council for British Archaeology, issuing a series of careers information sheets, running courses, and producing publications such as Archaeology in the National Curriculum. We are presently preparing to publish jointly with the Council for British Archaeology a major book, Teaching Archaeology: a United Kingdom Directory of Resources, which will appear in late 1996.

Each year the Education Service supports a small number of archaeological projects to help set up educational resources or services for schools and colleges. This might typically involve appointing an education officer, perhaps a seconded teacher, to organise visits and activity sessions with local schools and run open weekends during the holiday period for families to view work in progress. This year we set up this kind of arrangement at West Heslerton in North Yorkshire, Gosbecks in Colchester, and at Boxgrove in West Sussex. At West Heslerton, in the last year of excavation, children saw archaeology in action, increased their understanding of the Anglo-Saxon period, and saw how material is collected and interpreted. They had the opportunity to handle a wide range of materials including pottery and animal bone, examine seeds through a microscope, see costume reconstructions and see how some of the fabrics were produced.

At Gosbecks, near Colchester, where the Romano-British site is set to become an Archaeological Park, most of the remains remain buried, so it was decided to mark out the site with white lines. This gave schools an unusual opportunity for measuring and mapping exercises, and the children found out for themselves the real size of a Roman theatre or temple. At Boxgrove, a seconded teacher has worked with schools at the quarry excavations in each of the last 2 summers, looking in particular at geological aspects of the area and the methods of excavation. Some children recorded what they saw by painting and drawing.