The changing nature of GA Presidents

David Lambert told me a little about his thoughts on the changing nature of GA Presidents over the years in an email sometime ago. It reflects the changing nature of the Association itself, as it moved from a group of public school masters through a range of university departments, with the occasional curve ball such as Hilaire Belloc toward advisors, teachers and eventually primary educators, but as yet no people of colour and only around 1 in 8 being female.

"In the earlier stages the GA looked like a personal fiefdom of very few influential (and doubtless brilliant) men (mostly). It was led by prominent geographers for many years (just as chief examiners were also usually academic geographers. One of the most recent was Bill Chambers)."

This phase ran up until the late 60s probably and then changed from there, as the "new geography" began to emerge. We also had to wait untul 1968 for Alice Garnett to become the first female President, and 1975 for the first female teacher President in Sheila Jones.

"This was followed by a period of influential geography educators (usually teacher educators/trainers; Patrick Bailey, Rex Walford, Ashley Kent etc). Then local authority advisers and inspectors (Jeremy Krause, Keith Grimwade). Then occasional and subsequently more frequently, primary educators (Wendy Morgan to start with … Simon Catling etc" 

Occasionally, individuals outside the formal education mainstream (Kington). Then, occasionally, also serving school teachers (Morrish, Jones, Fox, Parkinson). 

The big question is where is the next development in the leadership of the GA going to come from? Susan Pike mentioned this in her GA Conference lecture.

David went on to mention some other challenges which meant that potential candidates may not be able to come forward and feel that they had time to do the role.

These included:

• the destruction of the network of local education advisers (although a few remain in counties or local authorities) and the almost non existent specialist inspectors (Leszek excepted) ; 
• the grip of REF on academics, which means that they may have less time to give to the Presidency; 
• the intensification of work for school teachers and the relatively low status of subject leadership roles in schools; 
• the changes in, and challenges facing university led teacher education … where are the next leaders coming from?

This partly arose from the nature of Presidential choice: essentially people were approached and asked to be President as the council or executive committee felt they might have the contacts or the experience that were needed at particular times. Now there is an election, and Presidential candidates are expected to have 'worked their way up'. 

Could that be adapted so that the GA goes back to approaching someone - perhaps someone who may represent groups that have previously not been represented by GA Presidents past, myself included...

Will the pandemic also increase the chance of people putting themselves forward. One thing that may have put off previous candidates was the need to travel to meetings at Solly Street, but this is no longer required thanks to TEAMS and ZOOM.

Just some thoughts as we move into the last 15 years of the project and get closer to the present day.... Your thoughts welcome.