Historical consciousness is the central concept in Swedish history education and the aim of history teaching in Swedish schools is to develop students’ historical consciousness. In 2015 the Swedish Schools Inspectorate, a government body responsible for assessing how Swedish curricula and syllabi are implemented in schools, offered a scathing critique of Swedish history education since it could not contribute to developing students’ historical consciousnesses. Taking its departure in Swedish history syllabi and the Swedish Schools Inspectorate’s recent critique of Swedish history teaching, this article discusses how we can come to theoretically understand how development of historical consciousness may happen. Using the results of this discussion, it is then suggested how historical consciousness could be developed in history education.