Lower 6th Form CurriculumSyllabus Followed: Edexcel ‘A’
Entry Requirements: Grade B in GCSE Geography
Geography at A Level will be enjoyed by those who want to make sense of the world they live in. It will provide students with an understanding of the environments and issues of the twenty first century. It sits comfortably with Science subjects or with Arts, Humanities or Languages. It will add breadth to any subject combination. Sound literacy and numeracy skills are needed to complete the course successfully.
If you enjoy Geography at GCSE you will also probably enjoy it at AS and A2 level. But there is plenty more in the AS course, so the academic challenge is there to be met. The content is broadened in the first year to include plate tectonics with the more familiar rivers and coasts on the physical side and population and settlement on the human side. In the A2 course the physical topics are the atmosphere and glaciers; the human topics are economic systems and development processes.
The AS consists of three units. All students will sit a physical and a human unit in the summer term of their lower sixth and it will be expected that they will also sit the field skills unit. A piece of fieldwork may be submitted instead of the latter or may be offered to replace it in the Upper Sixth. The A2 will be available to those students who pass AS. It also has three units: one physical, one human and a synoptic paper. The latter is designed to assess the student’s ability to draw on their understanding of the connections between different aspects of the specification.
The method of assessment at AS is through structured data response-type questions. Essay writing does not form a part of the formal assessment in AS but will do in A2. Thus, the practice of both skills will be an important part of the student’s commitment to the subject. They will also be expected to read widely, observe and digest relevant, current affairs on a world scale, familiarise themselves with basic statistical and graphical methods and analyse data presented to them in a variety of forms. All AS Geography students will subscribe to ‘Geography Review’ as an A Level support magazine.
The teaching of the subject at AS is split between at least two subject teachers, enabling the study of at least two aspects of the subject at any time. To quote an Old Millhillian and former Editor of the Times: “Geography is half of all education. (It) stands as the one true science, the study of the human environment in all its manifestations. Its only equal in status is the study of human imagination and belief through literature. Whereas literature deepens a child’s conscientiousness of itself in relation to others, geography externalises the consciousness to the physical and social environment. It makes the outside world make sense…It is geography, as the old professor used to say, ‘that helps me take my walk with pleasure and read my newspaper with understanding’.”
Geography graduates are highly employable and enter a wide range of careers from management and accountancy, to information analysts and conservation researchers.
