Summer is here...

Summer is here...

Year 13 at King's Ely is over...

Have a great summer everyone and see you all in September...

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license

King's Ely from the air

A new aerial film of the school campus... looking good...

King's Ely at the RGS Chelsea Flower Show

I was pleased to see that some of my school’s grounds team had worked with one of our suppliers: Barcham Trees to team up for an exhibit at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. This is exciting news indeed. The school grounds are always well looked after, and form a useful location for on-site fieldwork. 

I am fortunate to have a lovely garden right outside my classroom window.

The story is here.

One connection is a famous tree we have in Ely.

Believed to date back to around 1674 and thought to be one of the original London planes in the UK, the tree stands within the grounds of the Bishop’s Old Palace — now home to King’s Ely Sixth Form Centre. Recognised as one of the UK’s Top 50 Great British Trees, the Ely London Plane has become an important symbol of the area’s heritage.

Since 2013, Barcham Trees and King’s Ely have worked together to propagate saplings from the historic tree, helping to preserve its legacy for future generations. Young trees grown from the Ely Plane can now be found in notable locations including the Sandringham Estate, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Barcham’s upcoming Barn & Garden project.

Find them at stand PW192 if you are going to the event.

The welcome return of ERASMUS

Regular readers will know that I have been involved with ERASMUS projects for many years. These have included the DigitalEarth project - a huge undertaking involving meetings across Europe, the GeoCapabilities project, I-USE, D3, GI Learner and GI Pedagogy. Search the blog using the name of the project to find out more about them.

Two of these projects involved my current school, and my MFL and ICT colleagues were also involved in gaining funding for their projects as well.

I am currently involved with the EMO-GI project, as recent posts have shown - keep an eye on the project as it develops over the coming two years. I've been blogging about the progress so far. This is an interesting project with some ambitious outputs.

The British Council will be administering the ERASMUS+ funding on behalf of the UK as they did before we made the decision to leave the EU.

I recommend that you sign up to a newsletter to receive updates as we begin to find out more about what sort of funding will be possible for your school.

If you do sign up, you'll receive this message:

As the UK’s National Agency, the British Council will work with partners across education, youth and sport to deliver inclusive, high-quality opportunities for learners and professionals from all backgrounds.

We’ll keep you updated with:

• Key dates and timelines
• Information on eligibility
• Guidance on how to apply
• Stories and examples to help you prepare

International experience builds confidence. It builds skills. It builds futures.

I'm hoping to be involved with ERASMUS projects for some years to come, and am always available to add my expertise to projects.

Fingers crossed

King's Ely has been shortlisted for an award... fingers crossed we move beyond the shortlisting stage...

Far from a plane old tree....

More than £100 000 has been awarded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to help safeguard the future of one of the UK's oldest and most important heritage trees - The Great London Plane of Ely! 

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license

I am lucky to be able to walk through the Old Palace gardens whenever I want, and standing in the garden is a huge London plane tree.

Via the King's Ely social media feed.

Believed to be the first ever National Lottery grant allocated to an individual historic tree, the £121 000 will allow innovative bracing and pruning work to be carried out on the tree by Italian and UK experts, using ground-breaking techniques for the first time in this country.
The Great London Plane of Ely is situated in the gardens of the Old Palace, which is home to our Sixth Form Centre. 

The tree was planted in around 1674, and is believed to have been a gift from King Charles II to the Bishop of Ely.

David Day, Chair of Governors at King's, is leading the campaign to support the tree. 

He said: 

“We are thrilled that The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded a grant to fund the conservation of this heritage tree of national importance. The money will help to ensure that this magnificent tree can be enjoyed by future - as well as current - generations. It stands as a fine example of how our natural heritage can be conserved and nurtured. The funding allows innovative techniques to be implemented for the first time in the UK, providing a blueprint for the conservation of many other important trees. This grant would not be possible without the National Lottery players, and we thank them for their generous support.”

The Great London Plane of Ely was recognised as one of the Top 50 Great British Trees by The Tree Council in 2002 – the only plane tree on the list. It is commemorated with a plaque on site.

The Tree Council CEO, Sara Lom, said: 

“As identified in 2002, the selected heritage trees were of exceptional beauty, rarity or national interest, some as old as medieval cathedrals and a few older than Stonehenge. All our great British Heritage Trees are equally worthy of protection as are our stately homes and castles.”

With funding now in hand, a team of UK and Italian arboricultural experts guided by Dr Stefania Gasperini, former President of the European Arboricultural Council, will employ an approach called morphophysiology to conserve the tree. This technique takes account of how the tree has developed throughout its life, managing it as naturally as possible to support its future long-term growth. While employed extensively in Europe, this project will be the first time this approach has been used to conserve a heritage tree in the UK.

While the Great London Plane of Ely continues to enjoy vigorous good health and displays plenty of new season extension growth, old cable bracing installed in the 1940s and 1980s now needs to be replaced. The new bracing will be installed within the tree canopy, and over a 4-year period, precision pruning will encourage growth in the areas where the tree needs additional strength, sustaining its vitality long into the future.

The team behind the Ely conservation efforts, including Will Temple, Grounds and Gardens Manager at King's, are working with The Tree Council, The Woodland Trust, Arboricultural Association, and the University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering.

The conservation work is set to start in July, and real-time data monitoring will be gathered in order to assess the new bracing and pruning regime across the seasons, with the information collected made available to help inform conservation efforts for other heritage trees.

The Great London Plane of Ely (Platanus x hispanica) is a hybrid of the Oriental plane and American sycamore, and is believed to be one of the UK’s original London Planes. It is also the largest London Plane in the UK at around 42m high.

Plans are in place to ensure community engagement and public access to the tree through organised garden open days, artist events, tours, and participation in Heritage Open Days.

A camera will also be installed to allow the public to access live footage of the tree at any time, through The Tree Council website.

Maternity cover vacancy available at King's Ely

 A job opportunity for you to work at my school.

A part-time maternity cover teaching Geography in King’s Ely Senior school is currently available from September. 

This would involve 

Deadline to apply is 19th of March.

Details are here. Happy to answer any questions.

The post is part time to cover maternity leave for the whole of the 2025/26 academic year. 

This is a 50-60 % timetable and would ideally be over 2.5 - 3 days a week.

The postholder’s duties will involve, but will not necessarily be limited to: 

• Preparing and teaching high quality lessons to stimulate and encourage pupils in year 9 and at GCSE and potentially A Level
• Set and mark homework in line with school and department policies
• Record and review student progress; providing targets and guidance to improve student performance
• Offer support sessions for pupils
• Establish and maintain professional relationships with staff, pupils and parents
• Supporting department trips and events
• Attending parent’s evenings and other whole school events
• Setting and marking internal assessments
• Supporting the A level NEA programme by supervising candidates in their investigations

Will Fry on The Fens

Will Fry's Changing Places Substack had a recent post on The Fens: the location for King's Ely. It explored the way that places are represented in order to justify colonising or changing them.

e.g.

William Camden’s Britannia (the Lonely Planet guide of its day), written in 1586, depicted the Fen-dwellers as “a kind of people according to the nature of the place where they dwell: rude, uncivil and envious to all others”. This is an early example of the idea that the nature and character of a place can shape the people in it.

It refers to James Boyce's excellent book 'Imperial Mud' which looks at the landscape of the Fens.

New school identity

On return to school when term starts tomorrow, I will be at a 'new school' as we are rebranding to King's Ely Prep from King's Ely Junior. I will be interested to see how quickly all references to Junior disappear.

Congratulations to King's Ely students

It's always pleasing to see the success of students at GCSE and 'A' level who you taught lower down the school - starting them off on their journeys towards the success and getting them into the habits of mind and ways of thinking that sustain them.

That's particularly true of geography, where an appreciation of the stories, processes and places that change through the years that students focus on them is so important. Students remember those places you focus on, the postive stories and the negative stories you unpick with them, and the enquiries that they choose based on their own personal geographies.

There were some fantastic performances from King's students this year, and several will be heading off to study Geography at University. I wish all King's Geographers the best of luck for the next stage of their geographical journey, and look forward to the GCSE results next week as well.

GI Pedagogy MOOC - check it out

We are now coming to the final stage of the GI Pedagogy project.

The target audience is wide and you may be part of it...

The project’s outputs and events are aimed specifically at supporting educators (Horizontal Priority: Supporting Educators). 

This training will help teachers embed GIS within their curriculum. 

It will support them to feel confident in teaching GIS as a fundamental tool for modern geography, not as a superficial add-on to existing methods.

The training takes the form of a MOOC: an online course basically, with resources, videos and presentations.

King's Ely is a partner in this project.

Feel free to check it out.

Also feel free to follow us on Twitter @GIPedagogy.

Octagon lit up for King's Ely campaign.

A story from last week, when we launched our energy saving campaign in school.

Ely Cathedral’s Octagon Tower is illuminated red this evening (November 14th) to acknowledge the fact that King’s Ely has launched a campaign to reflect the climate emergency. 


Our ‘See Red for Crisis at Christmas’ mission aims to persuade every single student and staff member across our 75-acre campus to be more aware about the energy they are using, and potentially wasting, and the impact that this is having on the environment.


King’s Ely already has environmental impact and climate change high on its agenda, but this campaign aims to inspire lasting change amongst our school community and beyond.


We want an immediate response - lights being turned off in classrooms, day houses, boarding houses, offices and communal areas when they do not need to be on, as well as radiators and electronic devices.


King’s Ely is promising to make a significant donation to the homelessness charity, Crisis, and its ‘Crisis at Christmas’ appeal (www.crisis.org.uk) if a positive change is brought about! 

GI Pedagogy - come and hear about it

Come along to an ERASMUS+ event at my school: King's Ely, funded by the British Council.

This is a multiplier event for the GI Pedagogy project.

The GI Pedagogy project has involved exploring the pedagogy that might be applied when using GIS to support teaching, using Rosenshines Principles and a stepped model that we have developed, along with a literature review.

We have put together an online course which we'd also like to introduce you to during the afternoon session.

We'll give you a light lunch and refreshments.

Tickets to come along to Ely are free.

They can be booked on this Eventbrite link - there is space for 25 people in total in person.

If you can't make it in person, but would like to join online, let me know and we'll see what can be organised for you. Eventbrite doesn't seem to want me to add a hybrid event.

Year #10

It seems like no time at all, but I'm about to start the 10th year at King's and therefore the 10th year of this blog.

Thanks to all those who have followed and reading it.

1500 posts

This blog has been a bit of a slow-burner compared to LivingGeography. I started it around nine years ago now, when I was about to start a new adventure in the classroom, and didn't expect that I would still be working at King's, as Head of Geography in the Junior section of the school.

It's had up around 80 000 views, which is OK.

Thanks for reading.

Image: Sundial on Ely Cathedral - Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license.

Whole school photo

Can you spot yourself?

Whole School Photograph 2022 from King's Ely on Vimeo.

Job vacancy in King's Ely Senior

Within King's we have a pre-school, Junior and Senior School as well as an International School.

We currently have an exciting vacancy in the Senior part of the school which means you get a chance to work with me at my school. 

The job is shown below, and the link to the vacancy page is here.

If you are interested, feel free to get in touch with any queries.

King's Ely ISI Report now published

We had a visit from ISI to King's Ely in November 2021, and are now able to share the outcome - a very pleasing one for the whole school community.

We are thrilled and very proud to have achieved the highest grading possible in every category in our latest ISI inspection! 😊 You can read the inspectors' report here: https://t.co/OPderpm2CJ#KingsEly #schools #education #independentschools #independenteducation #schoolchoice pic.twitter.com/tRS1GhZsr9

— King's Ely (@Kings_Ely) January 14, 2022

Download the report as a PDF from here. 

A few mentions for geography in there.

Geography Maternity cover available from January 2022

A chance to support my department in 2022 covering for a colleague.

Working in the Senior School with KS3, GCSE and A level teaching.

Happy to answer questions... 

Eight years done

It's hard for me to believe, but I finished my 8th year at King's Ely on Friday. I also said bye to a colleague who had been at the school for 33 years, and done 99 terms at the school.

I joined the school as a part time teacher to support the work of colleagues who had been changing and updating the curriculum and the department, and I'm grateful to Claire Kyndt for the original invitation to work at the school, having been inspired by our work with Mission:Explore and other projects.

After colleagues moved on, I stepped up to be full time, and also continue to lead the department at KS3 and also KS2. I've taught GCSE and A level as well, but now focus on the lower school.

We ended the year with a reduced version of our usual Prizegiving service and event. We had Luke Jerram's GAIA looking down on us from the nave...

Happy holidays, and I'll be back blogging our work in September.