Preparing for Geography Curriculum and Assessment Reform
The decisions that will shape subject content, assessment and future specifications. Why the next stage is crucial, and why every geography teacher’s voice matters.
Curriculum and assessment reform will shape the future of school geography, including GCSE and A-level qualifications. We need to understand the process, engage with the DfE and Ofqual consultations, and make sure subject expertise is heard.
This week is AQA’s Assessment Reform Week, and yesterday I attended the subject session for Geography led by Stacey Hill, AQA’s Geography Sector Lead.
It was a really good session providing a useful reminder that we are now right in the middle of qualification reform. There have already been wider sessions on what assessment reform means at policy level and what it might mean for schools and leaders. Yesterday’s session brought that discussion down to subject level: what might reform mean for Geography?
For me, one of the most important points was the need to understand the system we are working within. Exam boards write specifications and design assessments, but they do not own the subject content. The Department for Education is responsible for setting out the required knowledge and content for each subject. Ofqual regulates assessment, including the assessment objectives and the wider assessment framework. Exam boards then have to take both of these and translate them into specifications and assessments. That matters.
It means that if we are unhappy with the volume of content, the balance of the specification, the assessment objectives, the role of fieldwork, or the way geographical knowledge and skills are represented, the most important moment to influence that is not once the specifications have been published. By then, many of the key decisions will already have been made. The key moment is when the DfE and Ofqual consultations open.
This was the point that really stood out to me: the importance of all geography teachers engaging with the consultation process.
The subject content matters because it becomes the foundation on which all exam boards have to build. If the subject content is overloaded, incoherent, too vague, too prescriptive, or not sufficiently ambitious, exam boards can only do so much. If the assessment objectives do not support the kind of geographical thinking we value, then the assessments will be shaped by those constraints too.
So when the draft subject content and Ofqual’s proposed assessment objectives and requirements are published, we need to read them carefully and respond. Not just as a tick-box exercise, but as a professional responsibility. The voices of practising geography teachers, subject leaders, curriculum leaders and the wider geography education community will be critical.
During yesterday’s session, Stacey outlined five broad areas emerging from the reform discussions so far:
Updating content requirements so that geography is more representative of the world pupils are learning about.
Giving greater prominence to disciplinary knowledge: not just what pupils know, but how geographers think, enquire and make sense of the world.
Strengthening the thread of climate change and sustainability across the specification.
Reinforcing the value of fieldwork.
Supporting smoother progression across Key Stages 3, 4 and 5.
There is a lot here that feels promising.
Many geography teachers would probably recognise the need to refresh GCSE Geography. The current GCSE geography subject content was published in 2014. The world has changed significantly since then, and so has the way we think about geography education. Climate change, sustainability, spatial analysis, digital literacy, global interdependence, geopolitics, migration, resource security and environmental risk all feel even more urgent than they did a decade ago.
But refreshing the subject is not just about adding more contemporary examples. It is also about deciding what kind of geography education we want young people to experience.
That raises some important questions.
What should all young people know about the world by the end of GCSE Geography?
How much content is reasonable and teachable within the time schools actually have?
Where should the balance sit between physical geography, human geography, environmental geography, fieldwork and geographical skills?
What should disciplinary knowledge look like in geography?
How do we assess geographical thinking without making assessments inaccessible?
How do we make sure fieldwork is valued, meaningful and manageable?
How do we ensure that Key Stage 3 builds towards GCSE without simply becoming early GCSE?
One of the most important issues is content volume. Current GCSE Geography specifications are substantial, and in many schools there is already pressure around curriculum time. There is also a real challenge in balancing taught content, fieldwork, skills, exam preparation and pre-release material. If reform is genuinely going to reduce unnecessary complexity and create a more coherent qualification, then something will have to give. We cannot simply add contemporary content, stronger climate and sustainability threads, more disciplinary knowledge, more fieldwork, more digital skills and more synoptic thinking without asking what should be reduced, removed or reframed.
This is why the DfE subject content will be so important. It will determine what has to be included. It may prescribe a lot, or it may allow more flexibility. Either way, geography teachers need to look closely at whether the draft content is realistic, coherent and genuinely teachable over two years.
The same applies to assessment. There are many legitimate questions here: the accessibility of exam papers, the use of command words, the balance of assessment objectives, the role of application, the demand of extended responses, the readability of questions, the use of maps and figures, and the extent to which assessments allow all pupils to show what they know and can do.
In geography, assessment is particularly complex because we often want pupils to apply knowledge to unfamiliar contexts. That is important, but it also places demands on language, reading, interpretation, decision-making and extended reasoning. If we want assessments to be valid and accessible, we need to think carefully about what we are assessing and how we are assessing it.
There was also an important point about progression. This reform process is not only about GCSE and A Level. The Key Stage 1 to 3 curriculum is also being reviewed, with revised national curriculum content for Key Stages 1 to 3 expected to be in place before the first teaching of reformed GCSEs. That creates a real opportunity. Instead of simply working backwards from A Level, or treating Key Stage 3 as a holding pen before GCSE, there is a chance to think more coherently about how geographical knowledge, skills, fieldwork and disciplinary understanding build over time.
That matters because progression in geography is not always straightforward. We do not simply move from “easy topics” to “hard topics”. Pupils need to revisit concepts, places, processes, scales and ways of thinking in increasingly sophisticated ways. The challenge is to avoid repetition that feels circular, while creating recurrence that genuinely deepens understanding.
Key Takeaways:
For me, the key takeaway from the session was not that all the answers have already been decided. It was the opposite. Important decisions are still to be made, and there will be points at which the geography community can and should influence them.
Our voices therefore need to be heard earlier in the process, while those national parameters are still being shaped. When the DfE’s public consultation on subject criteria opens in September, this will provide a crucial opportunity for geography teachers and the wider subject community to contribute. Waiting until individual exam-board specifications are consulted on at a much later stage would be too late to influence many of the fundamental decisions. Therefore we need to be ready: reflecting now, identifying what matters most and thinking carefully about the geography curriculum and assessment system we want to see.
We need to look carefully at the draft subject content.
We need to look carefully at Ofqual’s assessment proposals.
We need to respond not just with what we personally like or dislike, but with a clear view of what will make GCSE and A Level Geography coherent, ambitious, teachable, accessible and worthwhile for pupils.
This is not just an AQA issue. It is not just an exam board issue. The DfE subject content and Ofqual assessment requirements will shape what every exam board is able to produce.
If we want better geography qualifications, we need to engage with the foundations on which those qualifications will be built.
So when the consultation opens, geography teachers need to have their say.
For Heads of Department, it is important to begin these conversations with your teams now and to help individual teachers understand how the process works and why their involvement will really matter.
As a geography community we need to make sure we understand the importance of engaging with the public consultation when it comes.
Departments can begin discussions of what they will want to look for when the new subject content is published, which will involve reflecting on things they want to see changes in, for example:
Departments could begin discussing now what they would want to see in the new subject content. For example:
What should every young person know, understand and be able to do in geography by the end of Key Stage 4?
Which elements of the current subject content would we want to see retained, strengthened, reduced or removed?
What would a realistic and teachable volume of content look like within the curriculum time schools actually have?
Which geographical concepts, processes and places should sit at the heart of the future curriculum?
What would stronger coherence and progression from Key Stage 3 look like?
How should climate change, sustainability and environmental change be represented across the subject content?
What balance should there be between physical geography, human geography and the connections between them?
What would make the content feel genuinely contemporary and relevant to the world pupils are trying to understand?
What place should geographical enquiry, fieldwork and the use of geographical data have within the future qualification?
What kinds of geographical thinking should the subject content make possible, beyond simply increasing the amount pupils are expected to recall?
What changes would make the qualification more accessible for pupils without reducing its ambition?
What would make the subject content manageable for teachers to teach well?
What would we most regret not raising when the consultation opens?
When the draft subject content is published, departments can then return to these questions and ask whether what they hoped to see has actually been reflected in the proposals to help inform their feedback.
It is important that all subject teachers understand what is being decided, recognise what is at stake and are ready to respond thoughtfully when the opportunity comes - not just subject leaders.
Really useful Rob - thanks for feeding back from the event. Those are the sort of questions we will be thinking about in the RGS Education Committee too, but as you say, it's important that all geography teachers feed back and have their say separately too.