Honorary Membership

The GA Awards are presented each year after the Presidential Address at the GA Conference.

The highest award is Honorary Membership.

This year it was presented to Iain Palôt.

Iain has been Chair of the Post-16 and HE Committee for some years and also served on Governing Body.

The Committee produces a regular newsletter, which can be picked up at the conference. This year's edition can be downloaded here.

In it, Iain reflects on his career and involvement with the committee and the GA:

This piece is one for looking back, remembering those members of the committee who contributed so much and whose efforts should not be forgotten. Over the years we have been so well supported by people like George Metcalf, the NATFHE rep and the committee Treasurer in the days when we had a delegated budget. 

One meeting a year was always at the Victory Club at Marble Arch as he was able to stay at a reduced rate having made the journey down from Dunfermline. 

Other members of our illustrious team have included Brian Harris from Thames Valley, Alan Marriott, Andrew Powell from Kingston, Tim Foster from FSC Blencathra, Antony Allchin, Mick Dawson, Dave Turton, Julia Jones, Helen Hore, Simon Oakes, Bob Digby, and others too numerous to mention.

Secretaries, Treasurers, Saturday fieldwork organisers, Travel and Tourism specialists, Geography Matters Editors [Dave T had a couple of blokes out at “the airfield” who printed it very cheaply, and we gave away huge numbers of copies at conference]. Those were the days! 

I have been chairman for long enough and could not have done the job without the support of my wife and the committee members, particularly Antony and then Helen, to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude. To Gill for taking on the editing of GM in the face of a number of difficulties and her own personal workload. And to all the committee members that I have not mentioned – thank you for your support and contributions to the work we have undertaken. 

I am now what Catherine Owen reminded me of as we gossiped at the back of a conference session, an OLD, some would say very old, WHITE MAN - and the time is right for change. 

The committee will be co-chaired by Laura-Jayne Ward and Ellie Barker and I wish them all the success for the future. I am confident that they will do a great job in the tradition of the P16/HE PC. They are looking for someone to fill the gap left by my leaving, to add new skills and greater diversity to the committee. I am only sorry that I will not have the opportunity to work with Servel Miller from Chester whom I am certain will add greatly to the deliberations of the committee. 

Thank you all for your friendship, help and support over the past 40+ years of my GA membership. I shall miss being involved and hope to see some of you at conference this and in future years. Post-16/HE Phase Committee.

Congratulations Iain, and thanks.

GA Awards - deadline approaching for this year

The deadline for many of the GA's Awards is the end of December, and some are at the end of January.

If you are a GA member you can nominate someone for an Award, particularly if they are involved in one of the GA's areas of activity such as the Volunteer Groups, Journal articles, GA Branch activity or some other role.

Details of the awards, nomination forms and other information on the awards is here.

Each year, at the GA’s Annual Conference, the Association presents a number of awards to recognise and celebrate the contribution of individuals towards geography education. GA awards include:

1. Honorary Membership
Honorary Membership (normally one award per year) – this is the highest award made by the GA, in return for sustained and outstanding service to the Association. It confers lifelong and complimentary membership of the GA on its recipients. Read a list of GA Honorary Members here. Download the Honorary Membership of the GA nomination form here.

2. GA Annual Awards for Excellence
GA Annual Awards for Excellence (up to two awards) – for an individual who has made a significant contribution to furthering geographical knowledge and understanding through education and/or to the work of the GA over the previous year. Read a list of past recipients here . Download the GA Annual Award for Excellence nomination form here.

3. Distinguished Service Award
GA Distinguished Service Award (download nomination form) - for an individual who has made a notable contribution to the work of the GA and its charitable mission, particularly through specialist volunteer groups in the geographical community over a sustained period of time.

4. GA Outstanding Service Certificates and Diploma
GA Outstanding Service Certificates (download nomination form) - for outstanding service by a GA branch member to their local branch.
GA Outstanding Service Diploma (download nomination form) - for outstanding service to the GA through participation on GA committees or special interest groups.

5. GA Certificate
GA Certificate (download nomination form) – for the completion of three years service on a GA committee or special interest group.

6. GA Rex Walford Award
GA Rex Walford Award - for inspirational and innovative practice for those undertaking primary or secondary geography initial teacher education.

Further information about each of the awards including eligibility, nominations and judging is available to download below, together with the appropriate nomination forms.

Additional awards presented annually by the GA include:
Excellence in Leading Geography - journal articles judged to have made the greatest contribution to the development of good practice in geography teaching, as voted for by GA members. Recent recipients are published in GA Magazine. The awards will be presented at the GA Annual Conference.
GA Publishers' Awards - previous awardees are listed on our GA Publishers' Awards pages.
Geography Quality Marks – to reward and promote high quality geography in primary and secondary schools.

Please consider nominating someone for an award. If you don't nominate them they have very little chance of winning.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license

Paula's memories

Paula Richardson was awarded Honorary GA Membership at the GA Conference in 2021 - the Association's highest honour. I am working with her on an event to take place next year which will be launched later in the year.

She mentioned in our discussions that she remembered her first GA Conference. This took place in 1971 at the London School of Economics: the venue for the GA conference for many years.

She remembers meetings in small rooms, up lots of winding stairs, whe she had the chance to hear 'the great and the good' of the time, such as Arthur Holmes.

I hunted out the report on that conference from 'Geography'.

The main theme of this very well-attended conference, again held in the London School of Economics, was Geography in School and capacity audiences were privileged to hear a most stimulating series of lectures. 

Mrs. I. M. Long, in her Presidential Address showed how, at a time of sweeping changes in education, it is still of prime importance to interest children in the work they are doing. She demonstrated a method by which this interest might be gauged over a group of 1800 boys and girls of varying abilities and in many types of school. Professor N. V. Scarfe (Dean, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver), taking as his title "Games, Models and Reality in the Teaching of Geography in Schools", showed how new techniques involving inductive thinking should be used with discrimination to demonstrate real situations, but only after children have employed deductive methods in relation to the real world. In his lecture entitled "Recent Advances in Climatology and their Relevance to Schools", Professor T. J. Chandler (University College London) demonstrated in masterly fashion the circulation of the atmosphere, while Mr. C. E. Everard (Queen Mary College, London) in his paper "Geomorphology in Schools" urged teachers to look always at the totality of the environ- ment and to work wherever possible from real examples. Most informative papers on "Geography Examinations" and on "Geography and Curriculum Development" were read by Mr. B. S. Roberson (University of London, Institute of Education) and Miss Mary Goss (Staff Inspector, Inner London Education Authority). Mr. Roberson dealt with the structure and evaluation of G.C.E. O- and Α-level examinations while Miss Goss drew together and summarized the various aspects of the current changes in the field of education.

Paula aso talked about visiting a school in Farnham and there was a part-time / supply teacher there who drew an amazing block diagram of South Downs, and when she got talking to him it turned out to be Eric Young who said "you may have seen my book" - Young and Lowry of course. The classic text from when I did my 'A'levels. I have a copy in my collection.

Source:

“Geographical Association.” Geography, vol. 56, no. 2, 1971, pp. 154–159. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40567515. Accessed 31 May 2021.

Paula Richardson

Paula Richardson has been involved with the GA for many decades and held may different posts, and served on committees for decades.

She has also written the 'Meanderings' section of GA Magazine for even longer than I've written the Webwatch column. This comes at the end of each issue and is a sort of miscellany of ideas and links of general interest to all key stages. It always has something of interest.

Paula and her husband Tony have also written or co-written a great many resources for the GA including the Superschemes series, and resources to accompany another Paula creation: Barnaby Bear (see his own separate post)

Paula says:

After a lifetime in education including the placement and supervision of trainee teachers both in the UK and overseas I now work more specifically with teachers working towards QTS status.
Educators Abroad offers a programme to experienced teachers to assist then in obtaining fully qualified teacher status if not already held. We work in schools around the world in particular International Schools where the curriculum is taught in English. More details can be found at
www.educatorsabroad.org
As a geographer I am also an adviser, author and teacher. 

At present I chair the Publications Board of the Geographical Association and am also a member of the Governing Body of the GA.

She was educated at Ripon College of Education, Yorkshire and the University of Surrey, and completed her EdD at the University of Sheffield.

Paula was awarded Honorary Membership at the 2021 GA Conference - the Association's highest honour. 

Here is the citation that I read out.

Honorary Membership

This is the highest award that the GA makes and recognises the enormous contribution that the
recipients have made to the GA and to geography in education. This year the award goes to Paula
Richardson.
Paula joined the GA forty-five years ago in 1975 and she has given outstanding service during this
time in a multitude of ways – through her work as consultant, her many publications – including
the invention of Barnaby Bear for the QCA Schemes of work – and extensive work as chair of
Publications Board; she is a highly-valued member of EYPPC and FOLSIG; she promotes the GA at
national and international level, supporting ITE with Educators Abroad; she is also a GA Governing
Body named trustee.

She is the GA’s representative on the Education Committee of the Royal Meteorological Society.
Paula has been a consultant to the GA since 2005 and a Primary Geography Quality Mark
moderator since its launch in 2006. She has made numerous school-based CPD and conference
contributions over many years, always promoting the aims and objectives of the GA.

Paula has had a varied career; in addition to teaching, she has worked as a local authority adviser,
in ITT and in many significant roles for the GA. Other activities include her volunteer work with St
Johns Ambulance, most recently training hundreds of Covid-19 vaccinators.

She is constant in her service to the Association: few volunteers can be more deserving of this
award. As one staff colleague commented: ‘It’s hard to think of anyone who’s done more for the GA’.

Image copyright: Bryan Ledgard / Geographical Association

Mike Pearson - Honorary Member

Honorary Membership is the highest honour the GA gives, and Mike Pearson was named an honorary member in 2002. This was for his promotion of the GA in the NW for many years.

 

1972: Mr. Alan Durward Nicholls

Updated November 2023

Alan Nicholls was another of those relatively rare people who was a geography teacher when he became GA President, and a great proponent of Environmental Studies. 

In Balchin's Centenary book, he is described as an "active Head teacher" and in an Annual Report in 1971 as a "revered practising schoolmaster".

I delved and found out that he served on the Secondary Section Committee (as I did for many years) and was a member of the Central London Branch of the GA - which suggests he taught in London, and later found out that he succeeded another GA President Leonard Suggate as the Head of Geography at St. Clement Danes School in Hammersmith, London.

Here's an image from a Facebook page for the school. For a while, the only one I could find.

New Geographies over Forty Years was the name of his Presidential Address, given in January 1973, and by all accounts from the description, a humorous one, although it was not apparently printed in 'Geography' and not available to view unfortunately. I wonder whether a copy exists anywhere?

1971 saw a surge of interest in the quantitative methods, so perhaps he referred to those, and how the might translate into school geography? I would like to guess that he did, given the timing of his address a few years after the Madingley Conferences.

In that year, the GA Spring Conference (as it was called) was held at the London School of Economics, where it was held quite regularly.
Prior to being President, Nicholls was also Assistant Honorary Treasurer of the GA as well - another President to hold that significant (and voluntary) role.

Environmental Studies was one area of interest which he pursued, and this is a reminder of the different strands of geography which are picked up by different Presidents for their theme, address and also perhaps areas of interest while in the Presidency.
This area was also picked up in the Professorial Address of C. A Fischer, I have previously blogged about from my British Library research.

Nicholls article on Environmental Studies was also useful - see the link below



This was featured in a book on the development of this branch of Geography


Nicholls was chosen as the GA's representative on the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) geography board in 1966, and I assumed from early research that he was more of an academic geographer, but this was not the case.

I presumed from that appointment he taught in London, and that was what Richard Daugherty (another former GA President) thought when I asked him about connections with Presidents who were in post near to his own Presidency.

He is mentioned in this book 'Defining the Curriculum'.

Ten years ago almost to the day and from this platform, Professor Kirk said 'modern geography was created by scholars, trained in other disciplines, asking themselves geographical questions and moving inwards in a community of problems; it could die by a reversal of the process whereby trained geographers moved outwards in a fragmentation of interests seeking solutions to non-geographical problems'. Might not this be prophetic for us today? Could it not all too soon prove disastrous if the trained teachers of geography moved outwards as teachers of environmental studies seeking solutions to non-geographical problems? (Nicholls, 1973, p. 201)

A contribution described here is from Nicholls too.

This quote would also chime with those who explore the value of teacher subject knowledge, a current interest of many.

Following another thread, I found a small obituary tucked away in Geography in 1981.

He was born in 1910 in Cornwall, and died in 1981. He went to Truro School. He was made an Hononrary Member in 1980 just before his death.



I'm grateful to Fiona Hirst, archivist from the Clement Danes School for sending me another image of Alan Nicholls from later in his career.




References

Book link: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W9GHPA3zK0IC&lpg=PA1651&dq=mr%20a%20d%20nicholls%20geographical%20association&pg=PA1651#v=onepage&q&f=false 

NICHOLLS, A. D. “Environmental Studies in Schools.” Geography, vol. 58, no. 3, 1973, pp. 197–206. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40568109.

“The Geographical Association.” Geography, vol. 66, no. 4, 1981, pp. 320–322. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40570442.

I managed to find some images on a Facebook group page that was dedicated to the school, including an excellent image shared from a field trip back in 1953. This is one of my favourite images on the whole blog.

Thanks to the people who put the website together.
Here's Alan Nicholls on a Geography fieldtrip (presumably to North Wales)
Top of Snowdon, North Wales, 1953. Photograph taken by Jack Harvey and sent in by Geoff Skinner



He is fourth from the right on the front row and is described as "Old Nick" which seems fair. He seems to be having a good time as well. Some good fieldwork wear on display here, and great to see a President actually 'in action' doing some geography.

Thanks to Fiona Hirst for the additional details and image from the school magazine 'The Dane'

Updated November 2023

Revisiting past Presidents to see if I could find updates and came across an obituary in the RGS's Geographical Journal.

This reinforces his links with the RGS as well as the GA. He was the Chairman of their Education Committee and also served on Council. He studied at the University of Exeter. He travelled extensively.

He was a Cornishman.

"Good teachers are keen on their chosen subject and find it stimulating."

“Obituary: Alan Durward Nicholls (1910-1981).” The Geographical Journal, vol. 147, no. 3, 1981, pp. 394–394. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/633763. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.