David Rogers

The government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review , including its response , makes it clear that the current system is not working equally well for all young people. As a former Director of Inclusion, this resonates with me. While the review aims for “evolution rather than revolution”, its findings raise important questions for geography as both a subject discipline and a school experience. As geography teachers and leaders, we need to understand both the potential opportunities and the risks hidden within this reform narrative. We need to be hopeful in the belief that our wonderful subject is highly relavant and will adapt, whilst keeping our eyes onthe bigger picture. This is something that the subject associations should be driving. This post will focus on geography. ✅ What the Review Gets Right The report highlights several priorities that should benefit geography: Breadth matters – The review calls for a broad, balanced curriculum that reflects a changing world. Geograp...

  We often talk about children coming into the classroom with a rich bank of lived experiences — memories, observations, conversations, journeys, emotions. In geography education, I call this  the “geographical rucksack” : everything a child already knows (or thinks they know) and have experienecd  about where they live and how the world works. But here’s the truth we hesitate to say out loud: Children don’t automatically see their world through a geographical lens. Yes, they have experience — but experience alone doesn’t equal understanding. Without structured geographical thinking, lived experience can actually trap young people into one narrative, one explanation, one perspective. Misconceptions can become deeply rooted simply because they’ve never been challenged. Living somewhere is not the same as knowing it. 🔍 The danger of a single, unexamined story A child growing up in a seaside town might think tourism = summer jobs and seagulls. A child in a rural vill...

On 12th March 2026 , my book The Power of Geographical Enquiry will be published. It’s been a journey — and one I’m genuinely passionate about. I’ve tried to blend the pragmatic with the theoretical, rooted in two decades of classroom practice. The book is available for pre-order (with a saving). One of the key arguments running through it is this: much of the geographical knowledge we teach in schools will be out of date by the time a young person moves from their first Year 7 lesson to their GCSE or A level. The world changes. New data emerges. Examples that once worked become obsolete. But what doesn’t go out of date is how we do geography. That is not to say that substansive knowledge isn't important, indeed all teaching should be rooted in contextualised geography (local or linked to the local wherever possible). So yes, we have the ‘what’ of geography — the substantive content organised around concepts. But we also have the procedural aspect: how we question, analyse,...