Geographical Association

How effectively do we communicate what we do well?

When was the last time you were in the paper for your school's geography?

These extracts from two newspaper reports show how some schools are communicating what they do well to the wider community.

School earns silver award

'The school has achieved the Geographical Association's Silver Primary Geography Quality Mark as a reward for its creativity in teaching the subject. Judges praised the school's commitment to teaching outside the classroom, including fieldwork and day trips.'

School gets bronze award

'Some of the strengths highlighted by the award were hard work by an enthusiastic subject leader, the improved status of geography as a subject, the introduction of cross curricular themes and the progress and attainment made by pupils.'

These schools were broadcasting their quality geography to a wide ranging audience because the Primary Geography Quality Mark is a national mark of achievement.

The PGQM award will have been shaped by, and impacted upon, pupils, staff, parents and governors – so it reaches many different people and audiences both within and outside of the school. Whether or not you are ready to apply for one of the levels of this award, you will, if you are developing geography as a subject leader, want to develop a dialogue about the subject at some scale.

Who do you most want to communicate with about the quality of the geography that is happening in your school?

Have you told, informed or advised anyone recently of some good quality geography?

What about other staff at your school – how could you find out what they have communicated and who to?

Download Activity 1: Who should we be communicating our Quality Geography to? (PDF)

Why is it important to communicate good geography? Well, apart from sharing good practice with pupils and colleagues to enhance teaching and learning of the subject; good geography is central to some very important whole school issues and can provide evidence that a school is achieving across a wide range of agendas.

The Subject Leader and Assistant Head at Eastchurch Primary School in Kent (a First school) felt that geography helped to raise attainment in literacy through the provision of meaningful contexts for learning, such as active fieldwork.

Through her written report she found a way to communicate clearly with her head and staff colleagues how she felt that geography had contributed to raised literacy levels:

What follows is an activity for you and your colleagues in order to establish what avenues of communication you are currently using and which you might use in the future.

Download Activity 2: Communicating quality geography

You will only achieve whole school support for geography if your SLT knows what geography can contribute to the school as a whole.

Have a go at this activity either alone or with staff as part of a short INSET to evaluate how you are using communication channels.

Think of a whole school issue that is being developed in your school and jot down some ways in which geography can contribute. Are there some others apart from those identified in the diagram below?

How can you support your SLT to feed the richness of geography into the school SEF?

How will you engage your senior management team with this dialogue and develop the role of geography with regard to a whole school agenda?

Download this diagram in a Word Document

How do you choose what you will communicate? How can you convey important information such as the impact the geography is having? How might you use a presentation to showcase geography in your school?

• You could make a presentation to governors
• Work with pupils to present at an assembly to the rest of the school
• Have it running on a loop during an open evening
• Contribute an article to Primary Geographer or a PowerPoint to go on the Geographical Association website.

Go back and re-visit other units in this course, starting with A vision for geography, and reflect on the effectiveness of the presentation about quality geography shared by school subject leaders. Make a list of some key criteria for communicating effectively in this way. How might you adapt this approach to communicate geography within your own school? How else might you use it?

You have now reached the end of this course. If you are committed to the ideas shared here and have used the unit as a distant learning CPD opportunity you might want to gain personal validation for the learning that you have undertaken. It is now possible to do this through the General Teaching Council's Teacher Learning Academy. 

What is the TLA and how can I enrol?

Alternatively as a geography subject leader you may be interested in gaining recognition for your school through working towards the Primary Geography Quality Mark (PGQM).

You might want to communicate with others via the Primary Geography Champions Ning.

Or have you thought about writing an article for Primary Geographer? This journal is for teachers at Foundation and Key Stages 1&2, and is designed to inspire primary teachers to incorporate geography into the primary curriculum with better understanding and increased confidence. We are always happy to receive articles written by teachers who have been involved in curriculum making using our resources. Find out how on our Writing for the GA page.

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