KCSIE 2026 talks extensively about mental health, contextual risk, children potentially at greater risk, absence, information sharing, online harms, professional curiosity and whole-school safeguarding. Yet it still fails to name climate change as a foreseeable, context-shaping condition already affecting children’s physical welfare, emotional wellbeing, attendance, safety, learning environments and family circumstances.
Kit has stepped in and produced an illustrated set of guidance materials for DSLs.
As I enter the 2nd week of my school holidays already, I remember that some schools still haven't finished for the summer and next week sees another run of temperatures in the high 20s and low 30s.
My last week of term featured some very hot and uncomfortable temperatures in my classroom.
The guidance that Kit has produced (all free to use under CC license) includes scenarios to consider.
A heatwave is not automatically a safeguarding concern. A flood is not automatically a safeguarding concern. A drought warning is not automatically a safeguarding concern. A pupil expressing climate worry is not automatically a safeguarding concern.
But any of these can become relevant to safeguarding when they affect a child’s welfare, visibility, attendance, behaviour, safety, access to learning, home circumstances or mental and physical health. That is the point KCSIE misses.
Climate risks are not always safeguarding concerns in themselves. They are safeguarding amplifiers. They can intensify existing vulnerabilities or make hidden ones more visible: housing insecurity, domestic stress, poverty, food and water insecurity, transport barriers, medical vulnerability, SEND-related needs, sensory distress, caring responsibilities, absence from education, poor mental health, social isolation, exposure to misinformation, and unequal access to safe outdoor space.
Kit outlines why context matters here: both home and school.
She then provides a series of scenarios with illustrations and questions. For example:
What questions and decisions need to be made here:
The practical staff model can remain very simple:
Notice the context.
Respond proportionately.
Record factually.
Refer if concerned.
Review patterns.
That is KCSIE applied with context, and not an extra burden.
These resources should find their way into many schools - particularly those which faced difficult choices in late May and through June.
Growing up in Yorkshire, Friday was generally "chippy tea" night.
We were lucky to have some decent chippies in the village where I grew up. My parents' house was at one stage about 2 minutes walk from the XL Chippy which was decent and did scallop fish cakes - which any northerner will tell you is NOT a fishcake.
I checked on Street View and it's now a seafood restaurant upstairs.
Image: Alan Parkinson
I've got a reasonable collection of food-related books that reference the cultural importance of fish and chips as part of our identity, but also a meal that we owe to migrants: Portuguese and Jewish amongst others, as well as the arrival of the potato from South America and the risks taken by fishing boats in the waters around Iceland or even further north.
It's worth exploring the story of Fish and Chips.
I've produced a resource on this topic, which I've shared previously elsewhere.
It needed a little update for the 2026 situation.... and I've now completed that.
This deals with the pedagogy around teaching about climate change and natural hazards.
This will have a bearing on an ERASMUS+ project I am about to start called EMOGI.
More on this in a recent post.
Here's a description of the project:
Dive into an immersive video game dedicated to flood risk prevention. You are a resident of a high-risk flood zone. It's up to you to anticipate and protect yourself from the rising waters. There's no room for error or your home will end up underwater...CRISEPAC project offers an intuitive and attractive online tool called MOOC which has free access for teachers and education professionals. This MOOC is developed around 9 modules and videos that explore the theme of natural risk in Europe:
The module topics are:
Why is it needed and important to teach about risks and disasters in class
Definitions: Risks, Hazards, Disasters - Disasters related to Climate Change
Risk memory
Risk typology
Natural Risk, Natural Hazards and Natural Disasters
Man-made risk, Man-made hazards and Man-made Disasters
Roblox is a very popular game. For several years, Helen Young has been working with the BBC and several companies to produce some immersive geographical experiences based on the game engine to add to BBC Bitesize's offerings for students.
Details were published here of the results of all that work.
Planet Planners on Roblox is a new geography game from BBC Bitesize delivering learning mapped to the KS3 geography curriculum (and equivalent) in an immersive and engaging way.
Planet Planners on Roblox offers a new way for students aged 11-14 to learn about some of the world’s most pressing challenges – from preparing for natural disasters to managing large cities.
A decision-making game with geographical thinking at its core, Planet Planners on Roblox develops essential skills like teamwork, time management, resilience, critical thinking and strategic planning as well as an understanding of human and physical geography.
It is accessed via Roblox – an immersive platform for 3D experiences.
Weather and climate: Extreme weather | Low-income country (LIC) climate change [Coming autumn 2025] Population and migration: Increasing immigration | Dealing with emigration [Coming autumn 2025] Food and water: Producing food | Conserving water [Coming autumn 2025]
I had a play earlier with the coastal erosion scenario.
You're dropped into a coastal village which is very nicely created. Here's just part of it...
You have to chat to NPCs and make decisions based around a budget and decide whether to act immediately or wait...
Here's my feedback for my first attempt, where I lost a bit of time due to unfamiliarity with how Roblox works... I didn't do too badly on my scores and made some reasonable choices, but unfortunately ran out of budget...
I can of course go back and play it again to try to improve my score - and spend a little less.
The content has been updated from the original website, and some more recent additions - including something that I added myself on permafrost back in 2012.
The sections are here now. There is more of a link with the lives of indigenous peoples:
For example, check out this section which looks at how the Arctic can be defined. Where does it start and end? Is it defined by the Arctic Circle?
There are 6 units for each of years 1-6. 36 units all fully resourced with slide decks, worksheets, quizzes and videos.
All units have been approved by Oak and will be appearing on the website in the next month.
They have been developed from an original model produced by Paula Owens and Julia Tanner by a team of writers and reviewers and a production team at the Geographical Association.
I am very pleased to have been part of the Oak Primary team. I wrote one unit, and helped shape a number of others through working as a reviewer.
Some of my images were also used in units.
Curriculum Explainer
Our curriculum nurtures pupils’ personal and everyday geographies, sparking their curiosity about the world, and guiding them to explore places and processes beyond their existing knowledge.
Our curriculum is structured around carefully planned pupil progression, encompassing the knowledge and skills required by the national curriculum in a range of regional and thematic units.
Key concepts and locations, including our local area, are revisited in increasingly complex contexts. Simultaneously, the curriculum imparts knowledge and skills of enquiry, mapwork, and fieldwork, whilst being contextualised and modelled throughout.
This versatile curriculum connects learning to real-world contexts, empowering students with the knowledge to grapple with complex issues, such as climate change and sustainability, at both a local and global scale.
The curriculum aims to enable pupils to know and understand more about the world, and view it through a geographical lens.
Here's my unit;
It includes some themes which will need to be tackled in various ways in many schools following the recent events in cities around the country.
And here are the subject principles...
Focuses on the knowledge and skills specific to geography, including:
World knowledge (encompassing locational, place, environmental, physical and human processes) developed through thematic and place-based studies at a range of scales;
How geographical knowledge originates and is revised.
Develops pupils’ knowledge and application of geographical investigation skills, including:
Using maps, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), spatial statistics, aerial and satellite imagery;
Using the fieldwork enquiry process and associated data collection, presentation and analysis techniques.
Develops understanding of contemporary geographical debates and real world challenges through organising, connecting and applying what they have been taught.
This is a blog to share work around my work as Vice President:Education of the Royal Geographical Society.
The GA's Fieldwork Festival during June has ended, but fieldwork can carry on at any time of course, and we hope that your summer travels may well involve some 'fieldtrips' AKA family holidays, or personal travels. These may be in the local area or further afield.
One issue for teachers when consultations take place is to have ideas for fieldwork which are low cost (ideally free) and can be carried out in the local area. In terms of having ideas for fieldwork. The sharing of ideas in this area are particularly helpful.
The form can be used to tell us about the fieldwork that you are undertaking, and help share examples of free resources.
Have you got fieldwork resources that other teachers might find useful?
These might be resources for fieldwork in a specific location or for fieldwork activities that could be carried out anywhere.
Select the fieldwork location and upload any accompanying materials to share.
Esri and RGS will not check or verify information added here. Teachers and schools using this 'crowdsourced' information are responsible for checking accuracy and considering all aspects of health and safety before using any of the shared ideas and resources to undertake fieldwork.
The suggestions shared should only involve access to public land.
Teachers must have the right to share the materials they upload and by uploading them, teachers agree to allow others to freely make use of them to develop their own fieldwork.
No one may sell information or resources presented here.
All of the materials shared through this fieldwork ideas and resources portal are published under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence
This new Carbon Brief resource was once again the perfect timing for some work we are doing in school. It explores the impacts of warmer summers on schools and the performance of students.
Thus far, we have not had any prolonged periods of weather over 28 degrees C - the heatwave threshold for Cambridgeshire.
The Economist has an Educational Foundation which shares ideas for how teachers can engage with selected articles from the magazines's output. It's also worth following the magaine on various social media accounts for all updates on content and useful articles.
— Canadian Geographic Education (@CanGeoEdu) May 6, 2023
The Canadian Geographic Education website now contains a whole range of new resources which reference the work of King Charles III on the environment over the years.
This initiative is inspired by His Majesty the King’s commitment to the environment. Working with the Eden Project’s National Wildflower Centre, over 200,000 seeds packets will be sent to schools.
If planted together, around 40 rugby pitch sized wildflowers meadows would be created. The packets of seeds include native annual wildflower species, like cornflower, corn poppy and corn chamomile.
Planting the seeds will be an opportunity for children to engage with the natural world and learn more about the importance of biodiversity, as well as being a way for them to celebrate a historic national moment.
As the post says: We’re also developing a new Natural History GCSE which will enable young people to explore the world by learning about environmental and sustainability issues, and gain a deeper knowledge of the natural world around them.
This got slightly delayed by other factors, but is now available ahead of next week's anniversary and commemorations which will take place along the coasts which were affected. I know there is a service and exhibition in both Snettisham and Hunstanton and aim to visit them this weekend, and then locations further round to the south of Norfolk and the Broads.
The Environment Agency - one of the GA's strategic partners - published a useful image of the flood defences as they were back in 1953 on a Pinterest board and it is shown below.
More to come on this over the next few days. Look back at the posts from Southwold at the start of January as well for more related content to the floods, or search this blog using the search box top left.
I shall be out and about along the coast this coming weekend in a number of locations and will share some pictures in a Flickr album which I will share here.
I know there are permanent memorials in Hunstanton and Snettisham, and a search revealed one in Harwich. I would imagine there are others and would love to hear about them or see pictures of them if you know of one.
Mr. Parkinson has been reviewing this new resource from Pearson.
Curriculum making is an important part of any teacher's professional identity: engaging with the discipline, and developing pedagogical practice, while considering the particular nature of the school's context and the young people who sit in front of you to ensure their geographical experiences are not only educational, but also authentic and empowering.
According to Professor David Lambert,
"Curriculum making is the creative act of interpreting a curriculum specification and turning it into a coherent, challenging, engaging and enjoyable scheme of work, it is a job that really never ends and lies at the heart of good teaching."
For Primary practitioners and Secondary alike, developing a curriculum across a key stage is a lengthy and time-consuming process, which may result in several iterations over time. There are a lot of decisions to make in this work, and not all colleagues may have the time to do this within a particular academic year's cycle, or have opportunities to undertake the necessary reading and other preparation to be able to do this work justice.
For this reason, some teachers will turn to ready-made resources and schemes which are provided by a range of organisations. These are probably well known to many teachers, but Pearson have now stepped into this arena with an offering of their own.
Pearson has a great deal of experience in publishing curriculum resources, alongside supporting teachers with preparations for external examinations with textbooks. They have now produced and released a completely resourced scheme of work for Primary Geography (and also History), which includes all the resources that a school would need to begin to move towards a (possibly) new and consistent approach across the lower key stages, supported by planning materials, resources, regular assessment activities and classroom support for teachers engaging with the material for the first time.
These resources are part of the Pearson Primary Extended Curriculum.
Pearson has spent a year working with staff at Reach Academy Feltham, Jon Hutchinson (Director of Training and Development at the Reach Foundation) and Emily Maule (Director of Humanities and Social Sciences at Reach Academy Feltham) to create a new, whole-school curriculum for Primary History and Geography.
The resource is provided as a complete curriculum, including what Pearson calls “I know that...” and “I know how...” approaches, which "enable pupils to not only show they know and remember more, but also develop the conceptual and disciplinary knowledge they need to become young geographers."
Pearson's website explains that the new resources adopt a: "pedagogically rigorous approach, validated by the hundreds of classrooms who have clarified their intent, been supported through their implementation and seen evident impact."
This approach has been trialled in a number of schools across the Reach Foundation before being made available more widely. This has doubtless ironed out many of the problems that are spotted when a new activity is given its first run through in an actual classroom with children.
For each Unit, teachers can access planning materials and lesson plans, resources, printable activity booklets and assessments which can be completed in various ways. The Units are split up into 6 Sessions, with each one ending in a Unit Check Out, which forms a final review check or assessment. There are 3 Units for each Year, suggesting that combining them with 3 History topics would produce a year's worth of lessons. Resources can be located quickly using the search function.
A series of free sample lessons are provided - you can take a good look at a KS1 lesson on the UK, and a KS2 lesson on Rivers to see whether this might fit with your own existing curriculum, or take it a step further.
Sample lesson plans to accompany the resources can also be seen on the link above.
I've had a good look through the resources and supporting documents for geography.
There are some familiar topics which receive a fresh look, along with some interesting new areas of study - Year 6 will explore fast fashion, for example, alongside carrying out fieldwork. Year 4, for example includes Rivers (with a focus on the Volga), Migration (including a look at Windrush) and Natural Resources (with a located example of Chile and its copper mines).
In addition to the lesson materials there are Concept toolkits, which allow for the exploration of some of the key underpinning concepts of the Units. These concepts include Change and Location and Place. The materials here introduce strategies to organise class discussions, group work and decision making.
There is plenty of support for writing, such as the inclusion of structure strips for some of the key topics when extended writing is required, which are formatted ready for printing.
Speaking of printing, there is likely to be a lot of printing required to disseminate the very thorough, but lengthy booklets for both pupils and teachers which accompany each Unit. The Year 4 Pupil booklet on the Migration Unit is 31 pages long, for example. Schools would need to factor in a photocopying budget. The booklets are provided in PDF format.
Each pupil booklet starts with a knowledge organiser (you may have your own views on those), and a learning review page to track progress through the Unit. Activities include labelling, cloze text passages, connecting boxes and sorting information as well as writing answers - generally quite short pieces of text, or capturing ideas. The accompanying Teacher booklets will give teachers confidence in what is required, and help pupils through each Session. Pacing is likely to be important here, and the amount of text and visuals may overwhelm some learners.
There is one problematic Unit entitled Slums, which I would not personally use given the language, and could usefully be rebranded as 'Homes: Near and Far', or something similar.
There are differing opinions about the use of the term 'slums' and I understand that Pearson did speak to subject experts and teachers before making the decision to use it. However, they are now consulting with teachers who have bought these resources and will use their feedback to decide whether to update the unit to avoid the term.
One possible omission from the resource is any multimedia material - such as videos which are aimed at use by pupils or teachers - the materials are quite 'static' and a few animations or sound clips with effects would have been helpful for a Primary audience.
There are some videos included, but these are restricted to teacher briefings for each unit from the project's lead: Jon Hutchinson.
In the video below, for example, he talks about the approach that has been taken and the work that has been done so far, which may sound like something that you would find develops your current practice. If so, it would be worth taking out a trial subscription.
This approach will not be for everyone, but given the nature of the profession, as we reset after COVID19 and face other challenges with recruitment and recent financial crises, support of this kind will be welcomed by many.
The Cambridge Primary Review is also a little cautious of the approach taken by some schools and Trusts, suggesting that "children will not learn to think for themselves if their teachers are expected merely to do as they are told."
It is the consistency of approach, format of materials and connection with cognitive science that will provide the appeal for many Primary colleagues.
There will likely be different approaches to using the resources which will probably include adapting them or including a few additional resources such as videos or music.
You can request a FREE TRIAL,and this may be a useful first step to see whether the resources are going to be the answer to your current problems, or a support for colleagues.
Trials run for one month - International schools have two months.
The price to access the Primary Geography content is £400-£450 a year. The current increases in energy and staffing costs mean this will require a careful investment decision. Subscription to the content provides school access to the online content for 12 full months from the date of registration. Teachers accessing the resources via a subscription of this kind must of course be from the same school and use their school email addresses.
For those who want to pair up the Geography content with the History content, the price is £800 for the year for both.
I've also taken a look at the Primary History content, and the structure and focus for each unit is consistent with the Geography content, to provide a consistent experience across the Humanities in schools that go for that option, particularly where teachers may not be subject specialists.
There are also supporting Professional Development courses available through to May 2024, led by John Hutchinson for those who want an additional level of support in finding out how to use the resources to the greatest advantage.
The activity explores the product life cycle of an item of clothing, with different routes depending on what the product is, and several other decisions that are taken during the course of the journey... This is revealed at the end.
Usefully, the team has also created a set of lesson plans which are helpful for those in KS2 and KS3, and with a strong cross-curricular / Global Goals theme. There are 8 lessons, each with a PPT and an accompanying overview document.
Here are the details of the team that created the game and accompanying resources.
This is well worth taking a look at, as there might be something here that can slot nicely into, or alongside existing curriculum content and activities.
Follow the link to get some more details. I hope to see some of you there.
Details:
Alan Parkinson's talk will be on Exploring Post-Covid Geographies: Navigating new normals in the classroom
The last year has seen dramatic changes around the world. This session will explore the implications of the pandemic on the geography classroom and the curriculum. What new human and physical geographies are emerging as a result of the impacts of COVID-19? Participants will have access to a detailed document and resources to help unpick examples such as the economic effects of working from home, changing demographics, vaccine inequalities, food security, air quality and the rise of the 'staycation'. There will be examples drawn from Alan's own classroom and an opportunity for sharing and developing ideas collaboratively.
There are resources for Primary and Secondary students, along with question prompts and answers, starting with this one:
There's a list of further reading, and also a separate page of resources on climate and the environment.
Would make a good classroom display for the start of the new academic year - perhaps a year when there is a focus on the climate emergency... as the front page of today's Guardian made clear...
A huge effort has gone into the creation of a 20 session scheme of work, with lesson plans and resources and a teacher guide, which are the work of the Royal Meteorological Society, particularly Dr Sylvia Knight.
This has now been made available online, and a printed copy of the guide will also be sent to all GA and SAGT members.
The 20 unit explore weather and climate, and are certainly worth considering slotting into any curriculum updates being planned for the next academic year - as many colleagues will be considering.
