RGS support through Curriculum change

The latest news update from the RGS sets out some of the support that the RGS will be providing once we reach the next stage of the Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR). 

From the RGS Schools team:

We’ve been actively involved in the Curriculum and Assessment Review and welcome many of the recommendations, but now they need to be put into practice.

We will be reviewing the new curriculum carefully and plan to respond to the consultation, drawing on the expertise of the geography teaching community and our members and Fellowship.

We need your input, insights and expertise. Your contributions so far in this process have been invaluable.

For the September consultation, you can:Join our focus groups – discuss the proposed curriculum changes by joining one of our online focus groups (exact dates will be published once the consultation is live). You can register your interest in attending now and we will contact you once the groups have been arranged.

Complete our survey – we will share the key questions for geography on our website so you can provide your input to us directly. We’ll draw on these to inform our response. More details will follow when the consultation is live.

Do you have any other comments to make? Please send us an email to responses@rgs.org. These will be picked up by the Education Team.

Getting curriculum ready

Look out for resources and webinars from the Society this autumn onwards to help you and your departments review your current provision, identify what needs to change and then develop new programmes of work.

We’ll have a RAG (Red, Amber, Green) framework for you and your departments to assess what you already have covered well, identify gaps, and prioritise areas for development.

We will also be creating new resources mapped out against the new requirements, as well as offering CPD (Continuing Professional Development) to support you in new areas or where changes are greatest.

If there is other support you think teachers or students will require, please let us know.

Time to nominate someone for an OS award

Back in 2008 I was proud to receive one of two OS Awards for Excellence in Secondary Geography Teaching awarded each year by the Royal Geographical Society. The other award that year went to Louise Ellis.

Image: the RGS HQ - Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license

It's time for nominations for all the RGS's awards for 2026, and that includes the OS Award as well. 

Do you have colleague who is particularly amazing and deserves some recognition for all they do for the geography subject community?
Perhaps they are your Head of Department, a member of your department or faculty, a fellow committee member, or someone you look to online for support, inspiration and resources.

Why not nominate them for a Royal Geographical Society teaching award?

Each year, the RGS acknowledges two teachers or educators through our Ordnance Survey Award for excellence in geography education at secondary level.

Nominations for 2026 close on 16 February, so be sure to get your nominations in before then!

The process is described here.

And there's a list of previous recipients on the RGS website so that you can check that they haven't already been given one... although I suppose there's no reason they couldn't be the first person to receive more than one.... 

There's some illustrious names on that list, and I know almost everyone there, and have worked with many of them in some way.

RGS Eastern Region Christmas Social

The major event for RGS members and others in the East of England is also coming up in a few weeks’ time. I serve on the committee for this RGS local group and we organise lectures and talks through the course of the year.

On Wednesday December 10th, we are very pleased to say that the current Royal Geographical Society President: Professor Dame Jane Francis will be addressing our RGS East annual event on the topic of ‘On Thin Ice, a Life in the Antarctic’. 

The event will be held at Norwich School at the Refectory - a more spacious venue just round the corner from the Blake Studio where the sessions are normally held, with the same free parking. 

Doors will open at 7.00 with mulled wine awaiting you. Dame Jane’s talk will start at 7.30 and there will be more wine / soft drinks and plenty of delicious ‘finger food’ after her talk.

Dame Jane Francis will be talking about her own life in polar research while also covering the cutting-edge research now being done in Cambridge, including the threat to the Antarctic ice shelf, a major potential climate change tipping point. This work is both fascinating and vitally important. Jane Francis is Director of British Antarctic Survey. In 2017 she was appointed Dame (DCMG) in recognition of services to UK polar science and diplomacy. She became Chancellor of the University of Leeds in 2018, and was elected President of the Royal Geographical Society in 2024. She also serves on the European Polar Board and co-chairs the Atlantic Treaty’s Working Group on Science and Operations. Her own research focuses on understanding past climate change during both greenhouse and icehouse periods, particularly in the polar regions, the areas on Earth most sensitive to climate change.

There is a charge of £12 for non-RGS members, and £8 for members. 

If you haven’t already registered and wish to join us, please register in good time at www.rgs.org/events. 

Please also encourage young people to come - and be inspired by Jane Francis’s remarkable life in the coldest areas of the planet.

I shall see you there - probably serving mulled wine and taking some photos...

RGS Secondary Geography Teachmeet - February 2026

Claire Brown is organising another RGS Teachmeet for geography teachers in February 2026.

There are 6 slots available for an 8 minute talk on a topic of your choice.

Claire says:

"I'd really like to open this speaker opportunity up to teachers of geography who are perhaps new to the profession, or have been teaching a while but have never shared with others via CPD like this. Why not give it a go?"

Please sign up or I'll have to, and nobody needs to listen to me again...

New role... new blog

As you'll have perhaps seen from a post at the end of April, I'm going to be working as the Vice President: Education of the RGS from June. 

As with any major project that I get involved with, or new role, I've started a new blog. This will track my work over the coming years, and also publicise relevant RGS-IBG activity. 

When I started out on my GA Presidential journey,  I started a blog which now has over 850 posts on it, and includes a biography of every GA President to date as well as much more on the history of the Association and its activities.

No. 1 Kensington Gore is known as "the Home of Geography". 

I've taken that as the name for my new blog, as I'll be visiting more regularly than I have for a few years.

Lowther Lodge has been the home of the Royal Geographical Society for over 100 years. 

You can visit the new blog here. 

Please check back regularly over the months to come...