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Getting our bearings: setting our direction of travel

Getting our bearings: setting our direction of travel

8 January 2024

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‘As professionals we all recognise that there is always room for improvement and so willingly consider any and all findings within our individual contexts. Over the next few weeks we will explore some of the report’s key findings and reflect how we can work together to provide the highest quality geography education for our students.’

Jon Cannell

In September Ofsted released their geography subject report, ‘Getting our bearings’ which evaluated common strengths and weaknesses across a range of primary and secondary schools that they inspected. This was the first such report in twelve years when the 2011 report shared that:

‘…geography in primary schools was being lost in cross-curricular ‘topic’ approaches that emphasised generic skills rather than geographical knowledge. It also noted that geography was particularly weak in secondary schools at key stage 3.’

In the intervening years schools have worked hard at gaining a better understanding of the subject and ‘…this report finds that geography education is in a better place.’ ‘Substantial’ and ‘notable’ improvements were reported including that primary pupils are now far more likely to be taught geography through discrete lessons and the curriculum at KS3 was ambitious and leaders have carefully identified what and when content should be taught and how this is best implemented to empower pupils to build knowledge and re-apply it in the future.

Significant curriculum progress has been made

The recognition of the progress that has been made is deserved and mirrors what the GA has observed on a daily basis through the thousands of teachers and subject leads who engage in our consultancy, CPD and the quality marks. The progress is especially significant when located within the current geography education landscape dominated by staff shortages and time pressures.

Geography is a broad and multi-faceted subject, one which is difficult for subject specialists to grasp let alone non-specialists who are increasingly responsible not only for teaching, but leading, the subject across all phases. The 2023 report states:

‘At its best, a geography curriculum helps pupils to get to grips with this ‘unwieldy’ discipline. It equips them with the knowledge they need to make sense of the world’s complexity and diversity.’

It is unsurprising then that the report found that although strong foundations have been laid through the positive changes to schools’ geography curriculums there is still a way to go. As professionals we all recognise that there is always room for improvement and so willingly consider any and all findings within our individual contexts. Over the next few weeks we will explore some of the report’s key findings and reflect how we can work together to provide the highest quality geography education for our students.

Teachers of geography need access to subject specific CPD

We will start with the finding that:

‘Teachers of all phases received very little subject-specific continuing professional development (CPD).’

This is an all too familiar story with schools facing deficit budgets accentuated by the high inflation rates and the huge hikes in energy costs of recent times. There have been countless occasions over the last few years where teachers attending our CPD have shared that this is the first in-service geography training they have ever had, or worse… for many of our primary colleagues the first geography specific input they have received since they stopped their own school geography in year 9!

The good news is that the GA are here to offer support including through a carefully designed range of high quality and affordable CPD courses and bespoke consultancy matched to the needs of teachers and leaders of geography.

Our website is packed with advice, guidance and ideas to improve the quality of your geography provision and must-read publications such as ‘A framework for the school curriculum’ aiming to provide clarity around the ‘…key concepts, significant features and distinctive approaches in the discipline of geography; to highlight how these features can contribute to the education of young people…’

The Getting our bearings series

This blog is the first in our ‘Getting our bearings’ series. The series is a collection of posts which signpost GA support for some of the themes which were flagged in the recent Ofsted geography subject report and which have also come through strongly in our work with teachers.