It is a sad reality that key stage 3 teachers often have to assume “no knowledge” of the pupils who arrive in Year 7. Sometimes this is simply owing to a lack of cohesion and collaboration between secondary schools and their feeder schools, leaving secondary teachers unaware of what has been taught and, therefore, unable to harness that knowledge.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the geography classroom, the assumption of “no knowledge” is sometimes the reality as, for a variety of reasons, geography is not taught with adequate rigour at KS1 and KS2. This reflects a failing in our education system that I have sought to tackle using my own school as a case study.

As the director of humanities in a small all-through school in West London, I was presented with the unique opportunity of sequencing the curriculum from Reception to Year 13, across geography, history and religious studies. I quickly discovered that we were not successfully building on the learning taking place at KS1 and KS2, and there were gaps in the geography curriculum in KS1 and KS2 in particular that I wanted to address.

Furthermore, we had a KS3 curriculum that essentially started pupils on their GCSE trajectory in Year 7 and did not facilitate a culture of joy and curiosity in learning, which is fundamental to successful learning (Leslie, 2015). The need for change was crystallised for me when I realised that pupils were not producing uniformly high levels of work in KS3, despite the focus on GCSE preparation. I realised that resetting the KS3 curriculum could address these challenges and pave the way for the backwards planning that would be required to join up our KS1 and KS2 curricula with KS3. I started with geography.

There were some pitfalls I needed to avoid. I knew that in order for pupils to be able to think critically and synoptically, they needed to have sufficient knowledge, and so a knowledge-rich and knowledge-centred curriculum was essential. However, without careful planning, this risked a further reduction in the “joy” element.

I was also very aware of not wanting to start pupils on their GCSE courses prematurely and equally very conscious that equating “joy” with “discovery learning” where pupils “make sense of information for themselves” (Roberts, 2013) would be an issue. Pupils from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds are less able to be successful in this type of curriculum (Blake, 2018) and so this was a principle concern for us. With these potential issues in mind, I got to work.

Long-term learning

Learning necessarily involves bringing about long-term change in memory (Kirschner et al, 2006), so I needed to ensure that the curriculum was prioritising rigorous academic knowledge and the long-term retention of this knowledge (Sherrington, 2018). I started off with specifying in minute detail what pupils needed to know for a particular geography unit, by working backwards from what pupils are required to know at GCSE and A level. I sequenced the units of work so they delivered the right amount of challenge without overloading a pupil’s working memory (Willingham, 2010). I built into these lessons a system of knowledge recall quizzing, so we were offering frequent retrieval opportunities to ensure that the content was embedded in long-term memory.

With this in place, I was then able to work backwards from KS3 into KS1 and KS2, building a curriculum that embedded the skills and knowledge that would underpin what happened at KS3.

Here’s an example. In Year 7, we teach pupils about plate tectonics. This not only means that they have a good grounding in the topic when they encounter it at GCSE, but also means that they have important context when studying development and poverty in communities in which plate tectonics may play a role.

However, I wanted pupils to be exposed to and to engage with some of these themes before Year 7. So I introduced a mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes topic into Year 2. Again, this not only builds horizontal context for other study areas in the key stage, but also gives pupils a foundation from which they can more easily access the KS3 plate tectonics unit.

Another example: children are introduced to rural and urban settlements in Year 3, and then review and develop their knowledge and understanding of human settlements when looking at migration in Year 4, and then slums in Year 5. This gives them a really good grounding of knowledge for studying population and globalisation in Year 6. When they hit KS3 and study urbanisation, development and climate change, for example, their contextual knowledge allows them to delve into the material much more deeply and so consider new themes and ideas in a more sophisticated way.

These were big changes, and change is often intimidating. As a result, teacher buy-in has been fundamental to the success of a curriculum programme (Taba, 1962 in Wiliam, 2013) and I was very aware of the importance of ensuring that my team at school were all on board. It was also going to be a new way of working for the pupils, who can be similarly wary of change. And so the rationale had to be clearly communicated to pupils, so that they were confident of the reasons why things were changing.

This was especially the case in terms of addressing the “joy deficit”. One of the criticisms we have been met with is that the increased academic rigour can “take the fun out” of learning. However, in our experience, pupils thrive off being successful in the classroom, and developing great treasure troves of knowledge builds their confidence. Therefore, joy has prevailed in the KS3 classroom and this has been evident not only in our school but also in the classrooms of the schools that have trialled the curriculum, laying to rest much of the criticism.

So, what has the impact on learning been? The new curriculum has been in place since December 2018. The summative assessment format that we chose is now used from Year 2 to Year 9. Pupils write an essay in which they are able to bring all of their knowledge together in careful arguments that discuss a particular question. The first waves of essays have been very promising and pupils have felt a great sense of pride in their writing, with a substantial proportion in KS3 writing at a level exceeding that of some KS4 peers.

We believe that this improvement in writing is reflective of the more rigorous curriculum that the pupils have followed - they have deeper knowledge and therefore are able to write better. There is still refining to be done, but I am confident that this new trajectory will lead to a much more effective curriculum, one that carefully but subtly prepares pupils for success at GCSE and beyond.

This model of curriculum is also now in place for KS2 history and it has been rolled out to history and religious studies at KS3, with its expansion to KS4 well under way.

Plan like a pro

Being in an all-through school has granted us particular curriculum opportunities. However, I would argue that secondary schools should insist on closer relationships with their primary feeder schools, and, where required, support with subject-specialist knowledge so that the primary curriculum can be as rigorous as possible. This will certainly allow secondary schools to more effectively build on the momentum from KS1 and KS2. This collaboration could involve subject specialists leading CPD on specific topics, the sharing of materials or working with primary colleagues to plan the curriculum. In my school, I have had the opportunity to teach Year 4 geography, which was also highly valuable for the planning of the curriculum.

The curriculum must prepare every pupil for the pursuit of the subject at the highest level, equipping each with the knowledge that they require in order to lead lives of choice and opportunity. This means that whenever the direct pursuit of the subject ends, the pupil has had consistent access to an appropriate depth of knowledge and disciplinary-specific skills. I believe that the work that we have done to sequence the geography curriculum will deliver on this obligation to facilitate rigorous learning, and therefore support all pupils in accessing their brightest futures.

Emily Maule is director of humanities at Reach Academy Feltham

This article originally appeared in the 8 November 2019 issue under the headline “How to set pupils up for GCSE right from Reception”