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AMSR’s digital resource for A-Level History teachers

In April 2023 the Archive of Market and Social Research (AMSR) in London launched a new free digital resource that makes historical market and social research data available to teachers to help their students to stand out and enhance their grades.

Following a successful pilot among a small number of schools, the Archive of Market and Social Research (AMSR) has opened up its unique archive of survey reports for use by schools in the teaching of A Level History.   It will provide students with an understanding of how to use all digital archives, a skill that they can take with them when they move on to studying at university.

Louise Hunter, Head of History and Politics, Notting Hill and Ealing High School said of AMSR: “The archive really is a treasure trove! The girls fed back how very useful it was to see the resources on offer.”

And it is not just schools that find it exciting.  Professor Claire Langhamer, Director of the Institute of Historical Research said “I am an enthusiast for this archive. it gives us loads of really useful ‘stuff’ about the past.  As a social historian what you want is ‘stuff’…it gives us a beautiful tapestry of what life was like or what it felt like…  This is an archive that unlocks lots of different topics for modern British historians.”

Describing what AMSR offers, Adam Phillips, Chief Executive of AMSR, said: “This archive is unique.  It contains thousands of survey reports from the 1960s onwards, including, for example, many political opinion polls, reports of social attitudes and how we behaved, what we ate, how we voted, what we valued and how we shopped over the last 60 years – and how this has all changed. For the first time this material is going to be widely available for teachers and students to make use of original sources and come to their own conclusions, bring recent history to life and learn new and important digital skills.”

This material is ideal for A Level Modern British History, and other A levels such as Politics and the EPQ (Extended Project Qualification). Examples of how students can use the archive include: tracking the rise and fall of Margaret Thatcher; evaluating how much did Britain become a ‘permissive society’ in the 1960s; how effectively did the UK government deal with race relations in the 1960s; or the effect of the increase in the number of women in work.

It is digital, free to access and easy to use. As imaginative teachers draw up their lesson plans for the next school year and suggest topics for project work, they will want to include the AMSR archive and allow their classes to learn how to use archive material and to explore it for themselves.

If you’d like to know more about the Archive and its exciting potential as an A-Level History teaching resource, please contact the AMSR.