Carrying out an Environmental Quality Assessment (EQA)

The purpose of this set of resources is to provide support, guidance and ideas for teachers who want to carry out an assessment of environmental quality with their pupils. Together, they trace a spiralised progression pathway so that every time a pupil engages with an EQA they have an opportunity to build on what they have done before, rather than repeat the same technique in different locations or environments. However, they also work as standalone resources, providing an idea of what a high-quality EQA might look like for each key stage.

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There are several aspects to each resource:

• Introductory techniques – provides an overview of fieldwork techniques which could be used to introduce the environment and collect data which feeds into an EQA.
• Environmental Quality Assessment – provides clear instructions for how to carry out an EQA appropriate to the key stage.
• Data presentation – provides suggestions of how the data collected might be presented.

Throughout, there is a narrative, talking you through how you might want to set the technique up, suggesting questions that you might want to ask your pupils and things to consider at various points of the process.

An environmental quality assessment would be a suitable technique to use for geographical enquiries such as:

• Is our local area a good place to live?
• Where is the best place to locate a bench / picnic table in our school grounds?
• How does environmental quality vary along an urban transect / rural-urban fringe?
• Is there a relationship between environmental quality and socioeconomic indicators in a particular area?