Home
Blogs
The GA’s Framework for the school geography curriculum

The GA’s Framework for the school geography curriculum

13 June 2023
Read time: 4min27

‘The challenges involved in producing a national curriculum that is capable of meeting what are usually hugely ambitious aims are not to be underestimated.’

Alan Kinder, GA Chief Executive

For the summer 2023 issue of Geography (the GA’s international journal for geography educators and researchers), Eleanor Rawling and I have written an article about the GA’s Framework for the school geography curriculum (GA, 2022). We describe the framework as ‘a major curriculum policy initiative from the GA, with the principal aim being to influence future national curricula and qualification requirements’ (Kinder and Rawling, 2023, p.101).

We also make clear that the framework should not be read as ‘an alternative national curriculum, nor as a template for school practice, but as an enduring, underpinning view of the nature of the school subject, offered as a means of practical support for curriculum development’ (p.103). This blog explores why the framework is much needed.

A good place to start this exploration is with Deng’s acknowledgement (2022) that the construction of a national curriculum is a sophisticated and specialised task of curriculum making. The challenges involved in producing a national curriculum that is capable of meeting what are usually hugely ambitious aims are not to be underestimated.

Unfortunately, the processes of national curriculum and qualification requirement production in the UK since the early 1990s have rarely been ‘up to the task’, with the result that teachers of geography have been confronted with significant and ongoing issues of implementation.

Respecting the distinctive nature of geography

One type of problem arises because national curricula have not fully reflected or respected the distinctive nature of geography in a school setting. For example, the 2014 Geography National Curriculum for England omits any explicit references to the key concepts underpinning geography in schools, despite the fact that these provide the basis for progression in geographical understanding.

In contrast, the Curriculum for Wales specifies a number of concepts within the Humanities Area of Learning and Experience, but doesn’t identify the geographical content needed to explore this conceptual territory and provide it with real-world substance. Neither approach provides a secure national foundation for high-quality curriculum design at the school level.

Of course, many schools have designed outstanding curricula, for example by tackling the disciplinary and substantive knowledge gaps highlighted above – but teachers and schools (and therefore students) would surely benefit from greater curriculum clarity than is being provided in these two instances.

Balancing national prescription with localism and professional autonomy

This takes us to a second, related problem: the failure of national frameworks and requirements to delegate curriculum development responsibilities appropriately to ‘lower’ (sub-national) levels within the system.

We need national curricula and qualification requirements for geography to: set out broad subject aims in the context of the wider curriculum; relate these aims to the educational value of geography in schools; identify relevant disciplinary features of the school subject and broad expectations for progression; select a minimum entitlement of substantive content to provide a sound and consistent basis for pupil progression; and (crucially) to leave room for awarding organisations and publishers to make selections and for teachers to select content appropriate to their setting and expertise.

Eleanor and I refer to the balance needed here as a question of ‘license and guidance’ (p.104). Overly-prescriptive national requirements (e.g. the 1991 curriculum for England and Wales) reduce the ability of organisations responsible for developing qualifications, assessment systems or textbook materials to create distinctive or creative curricula, specifications and publications.

This approach can also lead to an overcrowded curriculum, leaving teachers with little option but to ‘cover’ the content, rather than provide time and space to secure the learning through application of concepts and practices to different contexts. This is one of the most frequent complaints made about teaching the 2016 geography GCSE in England – a problem the framework seeks to tackle by advocating for a more balanced and better structured qualification of the future.

Conversely, national guidelines that fail to address all of the essential features mentioned above leave teachers and schools to solve the most intractable curriculum issues for themselves. For example, geography teachers across England have in recent years grappled with challenging questions around curriculum sequencing – with precious little guidance on this being provided by the national curriculum documents they might reasonably have expected to offer support.

Putting the GA’s curriculum framework into policy and practice

Hence the GA’s A framework for the school geography curriculum, which is designed to help guide policy-makers in the difficult task of creating a national curriculum for geography. Admittedly, this must be a project for the medium to long term, and much work is already underway to engage policy-makers with its ideas and principles.

In the meantime, the GA is exploring the potential uses of the framework by geography practitioners in schools, colleges and teacher training settings. As part of this work, we have published a CPD pack for geography educators, alongside some case studies of its application.

On our curriculum framework webpage, we also invite teachers and others to let us know whether and how the framework can support the professional work being done today, which is of course subject to the constraints of current curricula and qualifications. There’s a feedback form on the page, and we’d be delighted to hear from you about your curriculum design work using the GA framework.