Here we explore the John Roan curriculum principles in the context of the geography curriculum:
- Entitlement: The geography curriculum meets and exceeds the requirements of the National Curriculum. It ensures that pupils develop a secure knowledge of a range of places, natural and human environments, with a deep understanding of the Earth’s physical and human processes. The geography curriculum ensures that all pupils understand the world in which they live, regardless of their starting point in Year 7 or whether they take the subject onto GCSE.
- Coherence: The curriculum takes a thematic approach, where knowledge is acquired, developed over time, and finally applied to places via in-depth case studies. Regional units allow the content covered throughout a year to be revisited, therefore securing the knowledge gained over the course of a year in the context of a particular place/ region.
- Mastery: Prior knowledge is regularly revisited throughout the curriculum where it is built upon and applied to new contexts. The scheme of work document shows where each lesson fits within the entire curriculum and illustrates how geographical knowledge and skills are secured before moving on. An example of this is how pupils need to be able to explain physical processes before human and physical interrelationships can be accurately explored.
- Adaptability: Comprehensive teacher notes encourage individual departments to amend and change their curriculum resources, case studies etc. to meet the needs of their own classes, and to ensure that local geographical issues are considered.
- Representation: A diverse range of places, people and environments are encountered within the curriculum which helps pupils to develop a broad and balanced view of the world. The curriculum ensures a fair representation of the places studied to avoid a single story and to broaden pupil understanding of different people, places, and environments. Support materials allow teachers to adapt curriculum resources to best suit the context of the pupils and communities which they serve.
- Education with character: The curriculum provides opportunities for pupils to share, reflect and learn about the different lived experiences for people at a local, national, and global scale. It also engages pupils with the big geographical debates of today and the future. This develops a fascination with place studies and allows pupils to take part in informed geographical conversations beyond the classroom/ curriculum.