York Castle Museum

Schools

Welcome to York Castle Museum's schools pages.

Click here to download our Primary Schools 2011/12 programme

Home to the world-famous recreated Victorian Street, Kirkgate, and the new York Castle Prison Experience, York Castle Museum is the perfect venue to explore and understand how people have lived over the past 300 years.

Thousands of everyday historical objects are arranged in recreated period rooms and galleries exploring the Victorians, Houses and Homes, Toys, World War 2 and the 1960s to name but a few!

Find out about birth, marriage and death in Cradle to Grave or discover weapons and armour in the Military Galleries. Our suite of Studios offer you the chance to get hands on with the collection – look out for the special events taking place throughout the year.

We have two education rooms, including a Victorian classroom, pictured above, which is used for some workshops and is open to visitors at other times.

During 2012, we will be extending and improving our Victorian street, Kirkgate, so some workshops will not be available after Christmas 2011 (see our Workshop Programme  page for more details).

Making a Visit

We offer discounts for school group bookings - for more information about prices and booking, click here.

Workshop Programme

A range of bookable education workshops support Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 & 2 pupils. Click here for more details and information for secondary schools.

Downloadable Resources

We offer downloadable trails and resources so you can make your own self-guided visit. Click here for more.

Opportunities for Teachers

Why not use our museum as a venue for your staff development days? This is an ideal way to combine an away day from school with practical and interactive sessions to explore learning in museums, or to brush up on your own knowledge and skills. Our Assistant Curators of Learning are happy to assist with planning your day.

In addition we can offer practical activities in our learning rooms, tours and talks by staff, behind-the-scenes access, cross-curricula approaches to learning outside the classroom, including culture, history, science, art, archaeology and citizenship, tea and coffee on arrival and assistance with lunch arrangements.

Badge of Quality

Our dedicated team of educationalists were among the first in the country to be awarded the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge.

The Quality Badge is a new scheme designed to combine both recognition of learning and safety issues.

The scheme is part of the Government's £4.5m Out and About package which encourages teachers to take their classes out of the classroom.

What our Visitors Think

"York Castle Museum is a superb social history museum with world-renowned displays, enthusiastic and well-motivated staff. Schools that come to the Castle for a workshop session will get a high quality product and their pupils will have a memorable experience.

"They will learn far more than they realise they are learning – the ultimate goal for all museum educators."  Sandford Award judge, 2011.

York Art Gallery, York Castle Museum and the Yorkshire Museum & Gardens have all been awarded the Sandford Award for Heritage Education.