It was with a slight sense of trepidation that I embarked on the research for the geography subject report.
According to some, primary school education is dominated by reading, writing and mathematics, with subjects like geography being squeezed out of the curriculum.
Some said secondary schools were a hotbed of left-wing activism, with students being taught nothing in geography but protest and propaganda. Or we’d hear that secondary schools are just factories, leaving no time to engage meaningfully with a subject as complex and nuanced as geography.
What we found, though - by visiting schools up and down the country and talking to teachers and leaders, and talking to students and looking at their work - was something very different.
The subject was being taught in all of the schools visited as part of the research for the report and in almost all cases the curriculum that had been planned was of a high quality.
In primary there was some variation in the amount of time given to the subject (from as little as 18 hours a year), but the ambition for what pupils should know and be able to do was very high.
In secondary schools, we didn’t find those exam factories. Students were being taught an exciting and rich geographical curriculum, being challenged to think about complicated and meaningful geographical questions about the world.
Issues with geography teaching
But this is not to say that there aren’t challenges and concerns with the subject.
At key stage 4 we found that the exam specifications had often become a de facto curriculum, with subject leaders working through their lists of content with little planning for how it would hang together as a whole.
This is sometimes driven by the inexperience of leaders who do not know that they could - or how they would - turn a specification into a curriculum. Time pressures also mean that any intention to work on the curriculum doesn’t come to fruition.
Other issues were found in the teaching of geography.
The first issue is when there is too little input of new information in the lesson and students are immediately given tasks that they just don’t have the knowledge to complete.
The second is when lessons have too much input of new information and students are given too little time to do anything worthwhile with the information in order to learn it.
While at key stage 4 much of the blame for this problem must be placed at the feet of the exam boards and their overstuffed specifications, it has to be remembered that in key stages 1 to 3 there is little more than a list of topics to cover and little direction for what to include within each one.
If schools feel their geography curriculum is a race to cover everything, they can make different decisions and cover less.
The need for specialists
Another threat in secondary schools is the difficulty with recruiting and retaining geography specialists. While many non-specialists do a great job at filling gaps in geography departments, their use increases the pressure on the subject lead, who usually has to give additional support, and it decreases the capacity of the department to plan and make changes.
Finally, a more fundamental threat to the quality of geography education is the nature of the world that we find ourselves in.
Geography is the world’s discipline. The study of it should help students to understand how the world works and to use this knowledge to make decisions about the future. But the world is a huge place and it is changing fast.
For example, the key stage 3 curriculum says that students should be taught about the geography of Russia. This must have seemed an easier proposition when this iteration of the national curriculum was launched in 2014, but what should geography teachers be teaching students about Russia today? How do we help them to understand this part of the world? Do we understand it ourselves?
The climate question
Then there are issues like the climate emergency. This is taught in all schools and features very heavily throughout different topics in geography curricula, but there is little agreement on what should be taught about it. How do we strike a balance between making students aware of the stark realities of a changing world and also leaving them hopeful about humanity’s abilities to deal with those challenges?
When it comes to geography education, I am hugely hopeful about our collective ability to deal with the challenges that the subject and education system throws at us. However, those at the chalkface cannot do it alone. They need measured and sensible reforms of the exam specifications, a change in the culture of accountability and support to develop as leaders and teachers of a subject as variable and ever-changing as geography.
If we get this right then the future for geography is looking bright.
Mark Enser was Ofsted’s national lead for geography. He is now an author and freelance writer
