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The National Archives has expanded its award-winning range of online educational resources for teachers and students for the new school year.

Five new collections of digitised documents and images are now available to help teachers wishing to cover specific historical eras and topics in greater detail.

The online collections, which can be used in teaching key stages 2 to 5, include topics such as:

• 19th century prison ships: lesson documenting life on board convict hulks and changing attitudes to crime and punishment (key stage 4)
• Victorian lives: using pictures, newspapers and documents to explore life in Victorian Britain, from the workhouse to Buckingham Palace. This can be used in conjunction with the interactive Victorians website (key stages 2-3)
• Selling the Victorians: looking at the colourful world of advertising to illustrate changes in society. Students can discover how the Victorians went about selling everything from dog food and soap to chewing gum and corsets (key stages 2-3)
• Kindertransport: revisiting the rescue of nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish refugee children from Nazi-occupied Europe, 75 years on (key stages 4-5)
• Attlee's Britain 1945-1951: using 45 original documents and images to introduce students to the birth of modern Britain, including the creation of the welfare state and the NHS by Clement Attlee's post-war government (key stages 4-5)

You can also explore some of these topics - including Victorian lives, Kindertransport and Attlee's Britain - through The National Archives' Pinterest boards.

This year for the first time a new workshop has been designed especially for students with Special Educational Needs (SEN). Treasures from the Past: The Victorians gives students the opportunity to try to re-create a Victorian photograph using replica costumes and to take it home as a memento.  

Visit our Education page for more topics, workshops and lessons, as well as details of how to book a visit, videoconferencing and virtual classrooms.