UCL Beacon School

“The College recognises that understanding the Holocaust is essential to understanding key features of the modern world.”

Torpoint Community College is a UCL Beacon School for Holocaust Education, working in partnership with the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education.

Within the History curriculum, students study the Holocaust as a central and unavoidable part of the history of the Second World War and post-war Europe. It is taught as a historically specific event, examined through careful study of evidence and historical interpretation, rather than as a general moral symbol or abstract lesson.

Teaching focuses on helping students understand how and why the Holocaust occurred, how it was experienced by different groups, and why its aftermath raised difficult and unresolved questions about justice, responsibility, and memory. Lessons are designed to engage students with complexity and uncertainty, and to avoid simplistic explanations or emotive approaches.

Holocaust education at the College is taught with seriousness, care, and restraint, and contributes to wider curricular discussions about evidence, ethics, and human behaviour.