Geography for Everyone - (GA Conference 2024 - Presidential Lecture)

This theme of this year's GA conference was 'Geography for Everyone' - and GA president Denise Freeman delivered an amazing lecture on Friday morning outlining just what that meant, and how we can work together to make geography representative and accessible to all - starting in primary schools.

As secondary geography teachers we often forget just how incredible geography can be in primary schools - often assuming that our Year 7s are starting from scratch and dismissing what they have covered in the KS2 curriculum. This tweet from a Year 6 teacher at Benton Park Primary School last week was a good reminder that quality geography is not just for secondary pupils...

There is so much to celebrate here - a really interesting topic considering migration, refugees, politics, and evaluating Maslow's hierarchy of needs - with an incredible level of challenge that some secondary teachers would believe was beyond Years 7 and 8. The response to this tweet was brilliant too - and showed just how much fantastic work and collaboration is taking place in primary geography now to ensure that all students are experiencing relevant interesting lessons, with discussion and retrieval embedded - a far cry from just working through units in the CPG study books (which was my daughter's experience of primary geography).

Denise reminded us that whilst we as secondary teachers have lots of challenges, there are so many challenges for those teaching primary geography...

• Lack of specialist guidance/support on how to approach different topics
• Lack of specialist geography leadership - leads to deskilling
• Lack of funding and time for geography CPD - also affects time and confidence in accessing up-to-date resources
• Limited specialist geography input during primary teacher training
• Limited time for foundation subjects as core subjects have so much content (and focus on SATs of course!)

Despite these challenges, we still have primary teachers working their socks off to ensure that their children experience good geography (as well as do the same for all the other subjects they have to teach, and as non-specialists).

Denise's theme 'Geography for everyone' is simple but at the same time not always easy to achieve. Throughout the conference there were many fantastic sessions that addressed the fact that many topics, places, examples and resources don't speak to the lived experience and cultural background of some students - so many of them don't feel represented within our conferences (I am going to blog about those separately, including Jen Monk's brilliant session on ensuring representation). And of course we are all aware of the fantastic work that has been done to decolonise the geography curriculum, but Denise reminded us that we need to consider those students who don't feel included as they find school difficult - such as those who are neurodiverse, those with emotionally based school non-attendance (EBSNA), or those who have been excluded. There are many who are not 'in school' and therefore get excluded from geography, for example, they might miss fieldwork. So how do we make geography for everyone, them included?

But we also need to remember that there are lots of barriers to geography that are applicable to all students...

• Poor experience in lesson due to non-specialist teaching (recruitment issue) and lack of curriculum time
• Content heavy specifications/schemes of work that don't allow exploration of questions fully
• Cognitive demands of the subject - lots of concepts, ideas and skills being used at once
• Spiralling costs of fieldwork
• Geography don't speak to lived experiences of students - so they struggle to see the relevance

So how we address these? And can we address them or will the situation just get worse?

Denise finished by talking about in order to make geography for all, students need to see the relevance of the subject to their future studies or career options. Students are not sure about what geography can offer them beyond school - they have no idea of the breadth of career opportunities or the earning potential of geography graduates. She highlighted the need to make much stronger connections between geography and the future aspirations of young people, so they can appreciate the relevance of geography and the opportunities that it offers (Suzanne Thorne delivered a superb session about designing inclusive spaces and the work that her department has done to promote careers in geography, and the impact this has had on GCSE uptake - I will blog about that separately).

One of my favourite phrases in Denise's lecture was the idea of being 'positively delusional' - she talked about the feel of imposter syndrome felt by many of the geography teacher community. I spoke to several presenters over the weekend who admitted that they felt this and were worried that their presentations would be rubbish or no one would come to them - which wasn't the case at all. And I myself am guilty of this, particularly as Grade Booster season kicks off, or I am on my way down to London to present some CPD. Denise reminded us that we needed to be positively delusional rather than imposters - and that we all make important contributions to the brilliant geography that can be seen up and down the country.

Denise delivered a fantastic presidential lecture - she spoke with passion and eloquence about how geography is for everyone (and even managed to power through an alarm going off for the first 10-15 mins!), setting the tone for a brilliant conference which showed just how hard the amazing geography teacher community are working to ensure that students feel included and represented in their geography lessons.