GCSE Geography

Examining Board: OCR (1984) Avery Hill 

Head of Department: Caroline Guest

caroline.guest@portland-place.co.uk

The syllabus is based upon the approaches and strategies of the Avery Hill Curriculum Project, which has provided a relevant context and philosophy for a 16+ examination in geography for two decades.  The essential features of this Avery Hill approach are:

• The emphasis it places upon the inter-dependence of teaching, learning and assessment;
• The belief that the geography curriculum for 14 to 16 year olds in schools should reflect the academic interests of the discipline and, at the same time, prepare young people to be flexible and adaptable in order to meet the many demands society is likely to make on them.  It promotes an ‘issue-based’, investigative approach to geography in which the issues serve as vehicles for promoting geographical knowledge, acquiring skills, increasing understanding of key concepts and developing informed opinions. 
• With this in mind, the emphasis is upon problem-solving and enquiry-based learning in which issues are examined in various and real contexts.

Such studies must take place at a variety of scales – small (including the local), regional, national, international and global, in different parts of the world and in different environments.

The contexts include:

• The United Kingdom with, for students in Wales, a focus on Wales
• The European Union
• Other, More Economically Developed Countries (MEDC)
• Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDC)

The syllabus consists of four Units, as follows:

• Unit 1: climate, the environment and people
• Unit 2: water, landforms and people
• Unit 3: people and place
• Unit 4: people, work and development

Other Activities

Coursework: Pupils are expected to visit a medium sized settlement and study the Central Business District. In past years we have visited Chippenham and St Albans.