Geography Requires Improvement (although has improved significantly since the last report!)

Yesterday Ofsted published the long-awaited geography subject report - and there are lots of positives to take away - the main one being that geography teaching is in a much better state now, than it was 12 years ago when the last subject report was written. But there are still areas of weakness that need addressing - and most of us wouldn't be surprised to find that fieldwork, GIS and non-specialist teaching are right up there.

So let's have a look at some of the key findings...

Curriculum design

The report highlighted that curriculum design was a strength at Key Stage 2 and 3 and that at Key Stage 3 it was particularly ambitious, more so than at Key Stage 4. This is a valid point as when I was a Head of Department I would ensure that Year 7, 8 and 9 had a really engaging and rigorous curriculum where the topics would link together in a logical order and feed into each other, building understanding as we went through. For example we would begin Year 9 looking at development, which fed nicely into globalisation, which then led into topics on food and tourism,which the emphasis on inequality throughout. An approach that many subject leaders take, and an approach that also ensures that students have a really good grounding for GCSE. Many heads of departments are very proud of their Key Stage 3 provision - it is carefully planned and they have complete control over what they teach and when.

The same can't be said about Key Stage 4. The report highlights that curriculums are pretty much based on the exam specification, and I remember reading a few years back a piece from the current subject lead for geography at Ofsted where he criticised departments that simply taught the spec. And whilst I do get his frustrations here, it is very hard to go beyond the spec when there is so much content to get through in two years, and of course we feel that we have to prepare students fully for the exam, which leaves little freedom for anything else. In an ideal world we would not be teaching to the exam but of course we know that the world of education is far from ideal!

The report also stated that pupils were sometimes given too much information and not enough time to apply it - again particularly at GCSE, and it argues that there is often a 'culture of covering material rather than of learning'. It feels that this is a really sad state of affairs in geography and that lessons shouldn't be like this. But every year we see desperate teachers on social media worrying about how much content they have got left to cover in the few weeks, and being tipped over the edge when the pre-release booklets arrive in school and realise that's another 2 weeks of lessons that have been removed for teaching content.

In the next couple of years we are expecting a rewrite, or at least a review, of specifications, so hopefully this will be taken into account, and the days of the 'race to the finish line' approach to spec coverage might be a distant memory!

Non-specialist teachers

We can't get away from the fact that there is a severe teacher recruitment crisis and this has certainly been the case for qualified geography teachers in many parts of the country. I was a HoD in Suffolk for many years in a high performing school with excellent GCSE uptake, yet whenever we advertised a geography teacher vacancy we would be lucky to have more than one applicant. So most of us are no stranger to having non-specialists teaching geography. In my previous school over half of Key Stage 3 lessons were taught by non-specialists (and many of them hadn't even taken it as a subject at GCSE).

This is problematic for many reasons - particularly as you can't really teach effectively without secure subject knowledge. The report highlighted that in many secondary schools non-specialists can't provide rich examples and anecdotes to help bring abstract ideas to life and engage students, and that they struggle to spot and address misconceptions. Instead they may be relying on information from resources that gave an outdated and inaccurate representations, leading to pupils learning ‘single stories’ about places based on simplistic knowledge and misconceptions.

This is exactly why the decolonising geography movement that we are seeing at the moment is so important - we are currently working on a free CPD course on how to start decolonising your curriculum and will share that will you all as soon as we can.

Lack of subject-specific CPD

As well as the idea of non-specialists not being able to deal with misconceptions, of course they will also struggle to teach exam technique effectively, and deliver fieldwork with confidence. And this is obvious when we see on the AQA Facebook group posts by non-specialists asking for help with 9 mark questions, or requesting help organising fieldwork.

And whilst the report identifies the need for better support for non-specialist teachers, it also highlights the need for more subject-specific CPD for both specialist and non-specialist teachers - 'Teachers of all phases received very little subject-specific continuing professional development (CPD). The areas where there was the greatest need for this were planning effective fieldwork, using GIS and teaching procedural knowledge.'

We are currently developing our range of CPD courses and hoping to offer a much wider range over the next few months. But currently we can offer...

Face-to-face:

• Essential AQA GCSE Geography/Essential AQA A-Level Geography - designed for non-specialist, early career or inexperienced teachers delivering these specifications for the first time
• Success in AQA GCSE Geography/Success in AQA A-Level Geography - designed for all teachers supporting students taking exams next summer

(Find out more about these courses here - https://www.tutor2u.net/cpd/co...)

On-demand:

• Teaching Effective Exam Technique - https://ondemand.tutor2u.net/t...
  
• Leading GCSE Fieldwork - https://ondemand.tutor2u.net/t...

We also have a range of study notes and topic videos that are available to support all teachers, including non-specialists.

Fieldwork

It is no surprise that this was highlighted as a huge issue. Covid had a massive impact on fieldwork - but the report states that 'fieldwork had rarely been a strong feature of the curriculum before the pandemic'. Whilst fieldwork was common in primary schools, in many schools in Key Stage 3 it is non-existent - often due to it being a logistical nightmare with the sheer numbers of students involved, not being supported by SLT and seen as problematic to cover, or just simply too unaffordable with the current cost of living crisis.

Fieldwork was underdeveloped in almost all schools, as the curriculum did not consider how pupils would make progress in their ability to carry out fieldwork over time... Leaders had not considered how fieldwork should be taught or how pupils would learn more about how geographers carry out their work.

So how can you maximise the fieldwork experiences that you offer students for minimum cost and effort? Fiona Sheriff wrote two excellent blogs about this for Fieldwork Fortnight last term...

https://www.tutor2u.net/geogra...

https://www.tutor2u.net/geogra...

The report also states that 'Fieldwork at key stages 4 and 5 rarely went beyond the minimum requirements of the exam boards.... most schools simplify this fieldwork so that pupils can give prepared answers in the exam, leaving pupils ill equipped for the non-examined assessment at A-Level and higher education'

To be fair most departments are struggling to meet the minimum fieldwork demands of the exam boards, let alone go beyond them!

It's worth having a quick read of this summary of the fieldwork aspect of the examiner report - https://www.tutor2u.net/geogra...

Help students understand the process - https://www.tutor2u.net/geogra...

And if you have no idea where to start when it comes to planning effective fieldwork experiences then these packs might be the perfect resource for you - https://www.tutor2u.net/geogra...

Geographic information systems (GIS)

The report highlight that GIS was not on most secondary schools’ curriculums, despite being part of the national curriculum. However it's not that simple as GIS traditionally involved software that was unaffordable to many schools, or special permissions added to the existing school network so therefore needed a bit of grovelling to the ICT support team.

But over the last couple of years the scope to add GIS into your lessons has increased!

Before the summer Katie Hall (from the Esri UK Schools Team) wrote a great blog about bringing GIS into the NEA https://www.tutor2u.net/geogra...

And we were very lucky earlier this year when Brendan Conway wrote a series of ten blogs offering practical advice on embedding GIS into your geography classroom.