Many schools not meeting scope or ambition of geography curriculum

Just under half of the schools do not meet the scope or ambition of the geography national curriculum, Ofsted has found.

Between January and March 2020, Ofsted carried out 23 geography subject inspections of primary schools. The schools were selected at random from schools that were graded as outstanding at their most recent inspection.

Iain Freeland HMI, Ofsted’s subject lead for geography, revealed in a blog that in most cases, the most significant gaps were in key stage 2. However, headteachers were aware of this and, in almost all schools, plans were already in place to improve this.

The inspections also found that in some schools, practice was not always as good as it could be and very few teachers had  been trained in teaching geography.

The blog said: "In some cases, this led to teachers not drawing out important geographical concepts or introducing errors. We found that pupils often struggled to recall places they had studied, including the principal cities of the United Kingdom and major world oceans. Very few showed a good appreciation of scale."

Important geographical skills, such as using maps, atlases, globes and digital mapping, using locational and directional language, using aerial photographs, devising maps, using Ordnance Survey maps and fieldwork, were also not taught particularly well, the inspections found.