Just one in five primary teachers has received any ongoing subject-specific training or support in geography, according to new survey findings.
Subject experts said it was worrying that non-specialist primary teachers are being expected to deliver the national curriculum with little “external support either within their schools or beyond”.
A survey of more than 2,000 staff, commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), also shows that low numbers of teachers have received support or training in core areas of the subject.
It found that just one in twenty (five per cent) teachers had been given training or support in human geography topics, and six per cent in physical topics.
And less than one in ten (nine per cent) have received support or training with maps and mapping skills, and eight per cent with teaching fieldwork.
Around one in four teachers (26 per cent) said they had not received geography-specific training or support in any of the areas they were asked about as part of the research, which was run by survey app Teacher Tapp and is weighted to reflect national teacher and school demographics.
The NAHT school leaders’ union said the findings were at least partly down to the government’s strong focus on maths and English standards at key stages one and two.
The survey results have been published after Ofsted recommended that primaries work with other schools on curriculum design to overcome the challenge of lacking expertise across multiple subjects.
Ofsted’s Education Inspection Framework places an increased emphasis on subject teaching in both primary and secondary schools. It examines the school curriculum by carrying out deep dives into individual subjects.
It has also carried out a series of subject reviews based on its own subject-based inspection findings.
Last year Ofsted found that close to half of the “outstanding” rated primary schools it inspected over their geography teaching were not meeting the scope or ambition of the national curriculum.
Steve Brace, head of education and outdoor learning at the RGS, said the organisation had commissioned the survey in order to explore geography training in primary schools after Ofsted had said one of the challenges with teaching the subject in a primary setting was a “lack of subject knowledge” and a “lack of training to address that”.
Mr Brace said: “The results of the survey are worrying. In terms of delivering the full national curriculum, you’re asking people to do that with little external support either within their schools or beyond.
‘I have a lot of sympathy for a non-specialist primary teacher’
“I have a lot of sympathy for a non-specialist primary teacher who’s expected to cover geography alongside all the other subjects.
“What is important is trying to provide time, resource and encouragement for teachers to draw on the support that’s available to them rather than thinking they have to create it themselves.”
He said the results showed that leadership teams needed to “invest” in their subjects and help teachers find resources to aid their teaching, adding that the RGS has many free resources available on its website that teachers could access.
Responding to the findings, Paul Gosling, headteacher at Exeter Road Community Primary School in Devon, said he was in favour of staff being offered professional development chances but said it was sometimes difficult to do so within budgetary and time constraints.
He added: “What’s difficult is working with the time we’ve got. We can’t add to staff workloads. We can’t do CPD after school when staff are tired. We also need the budget. Our budgets for CPD are pitiful.”
James Bowen, director of policy at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said it was “helpful” for teachers to have access to high-quality resources, but that given the breadth of subjects primary teachers had to cover, it was “unsurprising” that many teachers report not having had specific training across all the national curriculum subjects during their career.
He added: “The government’s strong focus on standards in English and maths in primary schools over the years will also have had an impact in this respect.”
