Michael Maddison is an independent educational consultant with particular expertise in the curriculum and the teaching of history.

He served as National Lead for history at Ofsted (2008 – 2015) and was the author of ‘History for All’, Ofsted’s highly regarded national report on history in schools.

Before this, he taught history and politics for over 25 years. During this period, he was also a senior examiner and moderator at both GCSE and A-level.

Michael has a wide experience of developing teaching and learning in history, and for the last fifteen years he has advised the UK Government on history, cultural and heritage learning.

He has also provided advice to governments, advisory organisations and teachers beyond the UK on how to achieve high-quality learning in history. This has involved advice and support for colleagues in, for example, Jordan, Macedonia, Poland and South Korea.

He is associate vice president and honorary fellow of the Historical Association (HA), a former Deputy President of the HA, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (RHS), and a former member of the RHS Education Policy Committee.

He is also chair of trustees of the Heritage Education Trust which oversees the Sandford Award, the kitemark for high quality heritage learning. He is also an assessor for the Sandford Award.

Richard McFahn has worked for over twenty-five years as a history teacher, Subject and Senior Leader, and Local Authority Adviser. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sussex where he leads the History Initial Teacher Education programmes.

Richard has regularly led well-received workshops and opening plenary sessions at the Schools History Project and the Historical Association Conferences.

Alongside teaching, Richard created the popular website historyresourcecupboard.com which provides history teachers with teaching resources. He has also written textbooks, articles and many blogs on all aspects of history teaching.

In 2021 Richard worked with Aaron Wilkes to create practicalhistories.com. This is a bi-annual free online magazine for history teachers.

Richard also organises, with the support of the University of Sussex, the Practical Histories Conference – providing valuable subject specific continuing professional development (CPD) to history teachers in the south of England.

Aaron Wilkes has over 20 years’ experience working in schools as a teacher, department and faculty leader.

He is also the Secondary PGCE History Subject Lead at the University of Warwick.

In addition to the classroom, Aaron is also one of the leading history authors in school publishing and the series which bears his name (KS3 History by Aaron Wilkes), published by Oxford University Press.

This is currently one of the best-selling KS3 History textbook series/online packages in the country.

He is also the Series Editor/Co-author of OUP/AQA’s KS4 History textbooks which match the AQA GCSE History specification.

He has written many teaching articles (for the BBC and SecEd Magazine, for example) and has delivered whole school and departmental training all over the UK and Ireland, as well as across Europe in places such as Moscow, Naples, Istanbul and Baku.