Place & Belonging: a new National Pupil Voice Survey
What do children and young people think about where they live?
Today, Local History Hub is launching Place & Belonging, a new UK-wide pupil voice survey exploring how children and young people aged 7–18 experience the places they call home.
We want to hear directly from young people about their sense of place and belonging, what they know about their local area, their experiences of local history and heritage, and the opportunities they have to explore where they live through their education.
But we also want the survey to be genuinely useful for the schools and colleges that take part.
Listening to young people
At Local History Hub, much of our work is built around a simple idea: place matters.
Local history can help children understand the communities around them, encounter the people and stories that have shaped their area, and think about their own relationship with where they live.
But before making assumptions about what young people think or what opportunities they want, we need to ask them.
Place & Belonging is designed to do exactly that.
The survey explores questions around belonging, local knowledge and curiosity, access to museums and heritage places, opportunities to learn about the local area through school or college, and whether young people would like more opportunities to do so.
It is not a test of historical knowledge. There are no right or wrong answers. We want to understand young people's experiences and views.
Useful for schools and colleges
We have deliberately designed Place & Belonging to offer something useful to participating schools and colleges too.
The survey takes approximately 5–10 minutes and is free to take part in. There are separate age-appropriate versions for pupils aged 7–11, 11–16 and 16–18, alongside short classroom slides to help teachers introduce the survey.
Schools can choose the scale that works for them, whether that means one class, a year group, a key stage or a much larger cohort.
Participating schools and colleges can also request a summary of their own results.
This could provide useful evidence for pupil voice and school improvement, help identify areas for curriculum or enrichment development, and highlight successes worth celebrating, including where pupils already feel strongly connected to their place or where existing opportunities are having a positive impact.
Building a national picture
Individual school insight is only one part of the project.
By bringing responses together, we hope to begin building a wider picture of how children and young people across the UK experience place and belonging.
Are young people getting opportunities to learn about where they live? Are they visiting museums, historic buildings and other local places? Do they feel connected to their communities? Do they want to know more?
And, importantly, what might schools, heritage organisations and communities learn from their answers?
The 2026–27 survey will remain open throughout the academic year. We plan to share interim findings before publishing a fuller national report.
Over time, we hope Place & Belonging can contribute useful evidence to conversations about local history, curriculum, cultural capital, heritage engagement and the importance of place in young people's lives.
Take part
Place & Belonging is open to schools and colleges across the UK.
There are three surveys:
Ages 7–11
Ages 11–16
Ages 16–18
Each takes around 5–10 minutes. Schools can access classroom slides, survey links and QR codes through the Place & Belonging webpage, and participating settings can request their own results.
https://www.localhistoryhub.org.uk/place-and-belonging-pupil-voice
If you work with a school, college, trust, local authority or education network, we'd also be hugely grateful if you could help us share the survey.
The more young people we hear from, the clearer the picture we can begin to build.
