Let geography students have their cake - and eat it

There’s a danger of making a mountain out of an underbaked molehill, regarding the criticism of geography teacher Alice Fevronia’s cake-based coastal erosion lesson (“Bake Off teacher uses cakes in lessons”). This lesson wasn’t just necessarily fun for fun’s sake, rather it follows the tradition of geographers using models to illustrate geographical features and processes.

Many teachers will attest to the difficulty that pupils face in making the conceptual leap from a flat diagram to the three-dimensional world, and the real value is not in the making of any model but its accuracy, explanation and annotation. Indeed, the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) holds an important collection of plaster landscape models created by the eminent 20th-century geographer Dudley Stamp that were made for similar purposes. So we wish Ms Fevronia well with both her baking and her geography endeavours, and would like to think that her next field trip might include a visit to Bakewell. 

Steve Brace
Head of education, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) 

Grammar school conspiracy theory

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the new government’s plans for education is neither its problematic spending commitments nor its harder line on behaviour - both possible election “sweeteners” - but a startling omission (“DfE planning teacher pay rises and behaviour crackdown”). There is not a mention of grammar school expansion. Conspiracy theorists, of which I am one, are puzzled. Or can we expect announcements once parliamentary sovereignty has been damaged, perhaps beyond repair?

Professor Colin Richards
Spark Bridge, Cumbria