In the first two posts of this series, I explored how the Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) renewed attention to curriculum shape, coherence, and the role of fieldwork and enrichment.
This final part turns to the question that underpins so many of our discussions about teaching time, workload, and learning: assessment.
Read Parts 1 and 2 in this series:
👉 Part 1 – Shaping a curriculum of powerful knowledge
👉 Part 2 – Fieldwork, enquiry and the geography curriculum
The Review recognises the strength of England’s qualifications system but also how assessment has come to dominate school life. Pupils in England spend more time in exams than their peers in most OECD countries, and the result has often been a narrowing of the curriculum.
CAR does not call for revolution, but for recalibration — fewer hours in exam halls, more space for learning that builds understanding and confidence.
This echoes findings from Ofsted’s Getting Our Bearings (2023), which found that assessment was too often driving curriculum content, rather than supporting geographical understanding. The report observed that:
“In some secondary schools, exam specifications have become a de facto curriculum.”
That line could almost have been lifted into the Curriculum and Assessment Review. Both documents highlight the same issue: that the means of assessment has sometimes displaced the purpose of teaching.
For geography teachers, this shift offers an opportunity — to build an assessment culture that develops powerful knowledge rather than performs it.
What the Review proposes
CAR recommends reducing total exam time at GCSE by around ten percent, trimming unnecessary repetition, and strengthening diagnostic assessment earlier in secondary school. It also advocates reforming accountability measures so that schools are not driven to over-test.
In short, assessment should align with curriculum intent — revealing what pupils know and can do, not merely what they can recall under pressure.
Getting Our Bearings found that this balance was often missing. In many schools, “assessment information was not well used to inform curriculum thinking,” while in stronger departments, assessment was “focused on pupils’ understanding of key geographical concepts and their ability to apply this knowledge in new contexts.”
Both reports therefore share a single conviction: assessment should serve learning, not the other way around.
The problem of volume
As Getting Our Bearings noted, “In some secondary schools, the focus on examination preparation has come at the expense of developing pupils’ deeper geographical understanding.”
The geography classroom has not escaped this “exam creep.” Mock papers, practice questions, and endless retrieval quizzes can crowd out the very enquiry and discussion that make geography powerful.
CAR’s call to reduce exam volume should be read as permission to rebalance.
Fewer, better assessments can yield more learning.
What matters is the quality of evidence we gather about student thinking, not the quantity of tests we administer.
From recall to reasoning
Geography lends itself naturally to varied and authentic forms of assessment.
Both Getting Our Bearings and CAR highlight the need for tasks that capture reasoning, evaluation, and communication — the hallmarks of disciplinary understanding.
Examples include:
Short diagnostic checks to reveal misconceptions and guide teaching.
Decision-making activities that ask pupils to weigh evidence and justify conclusions.
Fieldwork reflections that evaluate data and link back to geographical enquiry.
Concept-based essays exploring ideas such as scale, interdependence, or sustainability.
Collaborative presentations that develop oracy and the ability to explain spatial patterns.
As Getting Our Bearings reported, “In the strongest schools, teachers used assessment to check pupils’ grasp of key concepts, such as place, space, scale and environment, and to identify where understanding was secure or fragile.”
Together, such approaches create a more authentic picture of progress.
Designing assessments that serve learning
To make this real, departments can start with a simple audit — a step consistent with the guidance from both reports:
Map current assessments and clarify their purpose (diagnostic, formative, summative).
Identify overlap — could one well-designed enquiry replace several smaller tests?
Review timing — how much of each term is devoted to test preparation?
Align with curriculum aims — does each task assess disciplinary thinking, not just recall?
Ensure inclusion — can all pupils demonstrate understanding in multiple ways?
Getting Our Bearings emphasised that “teachers’ use of assessment to inform planning was strongest when linked directly to the curriculum,” rather than when driven by external pressures or isolated data drops.
CAR’s recommendations effectively apply that insight at national scale.
Building teacher confidence
Both reports stress professional development.
CAR calls for investment in teachers’ assessment literacy, while Getting Our Bearings found that “professional dialogue within departments about what progress looks like in geography was a strong feature of the most effective provision.”
Departments might:
Replace one mock with a collaborative enquiry project.
Use departmental time to moderate extended writing or fieldwork evidence.
Share exemplars of student reasoning, not just correct answers.
This builds the professional trust and autonomy that CAR places at the centre of reform.
Communicating with school leaders
The reduction in exam time will not automatically reduce pressure unless accountability systems evolve. Geography departments can lead by example, showing that redesigned assessments maintain rigour while deepening engagement.
Getting Our Bearings highlighted the role of subject leadership in this process: “In high-quality departments, leaders ensured that assessment supported rather than distorted curriculum aims.”
That clarity will become even more valuable as schools adapt to new expectations.
Implications for curriculum design
Revisiting assessment means revisiting curriculum shape.
If we are no longer chasing volume, we can revisit core concepts more deeply.
CAR’s emphasis on coherence and progression mirrors Ofsted’s finding that
“Pupils made strongest progress where teachers revisited important ideas, checked understanding and used assessment to plan future learning.”
Departments should ask:
Which concepts deserve more time for depth?
How can formative tasks guide future learning?
What evidence shows pupils are truly thinking geographically?
This shifts assessment from the end of learning to its engine.
A moment to reset
Taken together, Getting Our Bearings and the Curriculum and Assessment Review mark a rare moment of alignment between inspection and policy.
Both challenge schools to redefine rigour — moving from over-testing to meaningful evidence of understanding.
Start small: remove one unnecessary test, add one richer enquiry.
Replace an hour of exam rehearsal with an hour of reasoning.
Over time, those decisions reshape the culture of assessment itself.
As you plan ahead, see this as a chance not to dilute geography but to strengthen it — by ensuring assessment reflects the intellectual heart of the subject.
Closing thoughts
Across this short series, a pattern has emerged.
The Curriculum and Assessment Review does not ask us to reinvent geography teaching.
It asks us to refine and deepen it — to connect curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment so pupils can think geographically, not just perform geography in the exam hall.
That was the message of Getting Our Bearings — and it is now echoed in national policy.
If we act on it, geography can lead the way in showing what balanced, meaningful, and rigorous education looks like in practice.
Read Parts 1 and 2 in this series:
👉 Part 1 – Shaping a curriculum of powerful knowledge
👉 Part 2 – Fieldwork, enquiry and the geography curriculum