The first version of the Primary Resources site went online in November 1998. The site was initially produced using free software from a PC magazine cover disk and contained a small collection of teaching resources by Gareth Pitchford, the site's creator.

At first the site was only designed as a way of sharing the worksheets Gareth had created but then other teachers started sending in their own material as thanks for the resources they had used. The site was expanded to include these contributions and it's then that the whole idea of sharing material through Primary Resources started. At the end of 1998 the National Grid for Learning wasn't as organised as it is now and Primary Resources (along with other sites like Mark Warner's Teaching Ideas and the Teacher's Library) seemed to fill a gap.

Over twelve years after it first launched, Primary Resources continues to be a free forum for sharing teaching ideas and resources. The site is used by thousands of teachers worldwide and it's thanks to the contributions by hundreds of those teachers that the main site now features well over 2GB of free-to-download material.