YGOTY and Rex Walford Award - now open

Two annual RGS competitions were launched earlier today.

The Young Geographer of the Year is the Royal Geographical Society's annual geography competition for students, recognising the outstanding work of the next generation of geographers.

With its age ranges spanning the primary years to A Level, the competition encourages thoughtful and creative responses to a new theme each year.

Schools are encouraged to run their own in-house competitions before submitting their top 10 entries to the international competition.

The Young Geographer of the Year Award has been running for over 20 years, and each year thousands of children from across the world take part.

The Rex Walford Award is a more recent award.

The Rex Walford Award is for trainees or teachers in the first six years of their career, including students enrolled on a PGCE, SCITT, Teach First and School Direct, alongside ECTs and other colleagues in early career stages.

The award was named after Rex Walford. 

Rex was a teacher, a natural enthusiast, a leading international name in geography education, a long-serving Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and one of the first group of Chartered Geographers. He supported the Royal Geographical Society in many ways over more than 25 years and was also a former President of the Geographical Association.

Reflecting the late Rex Walford’s passion for training new geography teachers to inspire their students in their subject, it is awarded for the best set of teaching resources and lesson plans developed on the same theme as the Young Geographer of the Year competition.

The theme for both of this year’s competitions is: 

From Source to Sea.
Let’s explore the world’s river systems

If you want to have your students enter the YGOTY, here are the details:

Rivers are the lifeblood of our planet, carrying water, nutrients and energy across vast distances. They sustain communities, support wildlife, and shape the landscapes we depend on to live. From the smallest stream to the widest river, these flowing waters connect mountains to oceans and people to nature.

They remind us that a sustainable and thriving environment is not just a resource, but a responsibility that we all share. As we learn more about the world’s rivers, we also understand that it is our duty to protect them for future generations.

As they transport freshwater across continents, sustaining ecosystems, wildlife, and the billions of people who rely on them for drinking water, rivers also shape our landscapes through erosion and deposition.

Carving valleys, forming striking features, creating fertile floodplains ideal for farming and influencing settlement, rivers provide physical boundaries between places and have also facilitated the growth of many of the urban areas we inhabit today.

Rivers play a key role in the global water cycle, carrying rainfall from source to sea and helping to regulate climate. They provide transportation opportunities, trade routes, tourism, recreation and sustain the lives of a wide range of species, supporting fish, birds, mammals, and countless aquatic organisms.

But rivers can also be a source of conflict: where water is a shared commodity ‘water wars’ can be common. When flood management or hydroelectric power produced by dams happens upstream, dire consequences can fall on countries located downstream.

And who owns this water? Industry and the misuse of rivers can lead to pollution and the degradation of river ecosystems, threatening both wildlife and the communities that depend on rivers to live.

Flooding is a big issue, and the management of rivers to predict, mitigate and prevent the impacts of flooding is essential for protecting communities, safeguarding ecosystems, and reducing long‑term environmental and economic damage.
Show us what you know about rivers

We invite you to create a poster (or Esri StoryMap for KS5) that explores rivers, showcasing the processes that shape them, the features they create, and the many ways they are used by both people and nature.

We are looking for eye-catching, creative and informative posters and StoryMaps that delve into topics such as energy production, conflict, ecosystems, sustainability, trade and more.

We want to see you demonstrate your understanding of why our rivers are so important.

Your posters and StoryMaps should think about themes across human and physical geography.

For those teachers wanting to enter the Rex Walford Award, here are the details:

Remember that the Rex Walford Award is for trainees or teachers in the first six years of their career, including students enrolled on a PGCE, SCITT, Teach First and School Direct, alongside ECTs and other colleagues in early career stages.

We are interested to see lesson plans and accompanying resources that link directly to the curriculum and encourage students to think about any of the following:

• A range of named rivers, showcasing the processes that shape them, the features they create, and the many ways they are used by both people and nature.
• Curriculum topics such as energy production, conflict, ecosystems, sustainability, trade and more – we want to see how your resources help young people to understand why our rivers are so important.
• Themes across human and physical geography.

The lessons created can be aimed at any Key Stage eligible to enter the Young Geographer of the Year competition (KS2-KS5), and must include:

• At least two lesson plans
• Resources to accompany those lessons

Check the website for all the information by following the links....

1983 - Steve on Rex

One of the people who was particularly supportive of my application to become the GA President was Steve Rawlinson. He was President himself in 2015. 

He has previously shared his memories of Emrys Bowen or 'EGB' as he was also known.

Ahead of a lengthy post on Rex Walford, which will come up in a week or so, here's Steve's memories of Rex.

I first met him when I was working in Andover when he came to visit Geoff Dinkele. Both great innovators in geographical teaching. My lasting memory of that first meeting will be his impish smile and his curiosity about what we were doing – so supportive and encouraging.

When I needed an external examiner for a course I was running at Northumbria – not teacher education but a Joint Honours course with a wider education bias – Rex was my first choice and I was delighted when he agreed to do it.

On his first visit I picked him up from the station and he then insisted on a tour of Newcastle, but not the ‘usual sights’, he wanted to see the real Newcastle...his curiosity made me look and consider parts of the city in a whole new light. As an external he was incredibly supportive not only to me but to the students – he always had suggestions and ideas about how we might do things and constantly but gently made us justify what we were doing.

I guess my last contact with him directly was at the Madingly GTE conference when it snowed. His joyous enthusiasm for all that was going on was infectious...and that conference was a really enjoyable occasion.

It was a huge privilege to be involved in the setting up and running of the Rex Walford award during my 4 years in the Presidential group; to be able to keep alive some of the principles of innovation and fun in teaching that Rex championed so enthusiastically.

He was so passionate about what he did, and so interested in everything going on around him. He made you feel good about what you were doing while gently asking you to think about why you were doing it – he drew the best out of you. He was a ‘human’ geographer and is sorely missed.

If you would like to share your own memories of Rex (or any other GA President) here, or have found some memorabilia or images of conferences past, please get in touch...

Image: Copyright Bryan Ledgard / Geographical Association - taken at the official opening of Solly Street.

Rex Walford Award

The Rex Walford Award forms part of the annual Young Geographer of the Year Award organised by the Royal Geographical Society.

The award commemorates former GA President Rex Walford. 

Rex was a teacher, a natural enthusiast, a leading international name in geography education, a long-serving Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and one of the first group of Chartered Geographers. He supported the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in many ways over more than 25 years. He will have his own post on the blog in due course, but has already been mentioned several times.

This year’s RGS-IBG Young Geographer of the Year competition has just been launched.

The title this year is particularly apt.

Although we might all be confined to our homes, and doing #geographyathome, the RGS-IBG are asking young people to explore their wider geographical horizons by providing entries to the Young Geographer of the Year competition and explore the geography of:
'The world beyond my window'

They are interested in entries that explore the human and physical geography of places that exist beyond a young person's window, be it locally or further afield. They want to know how young people’s lives are connected to and influenced by these places - be the connections physical, digital or emotional. They also want students to demonstrate that they understand how geographical processes in the physical and human worlds have created these places and might be changing them.

Details on the Rex Walford Award can be found here.

The Rex Walford Award is for trainees or teachers who have just started their careers, including students enrolled on a PGCE, SCITT, Teach First and School Direct, alongside NQTs and colleagues at a similar stage in their careers.

Entrants are asked to produce a scheme of work, covering at least three lessons, that focuses on the theme ‘ The world beyond my window ’

Reflecting the late Rex Walford’s passion for training new geography teachers who can inspire their students in their subject, it is awarded for the best scheme of work, set of teaching resources and/or lesson plans developed on the same theme as the Young Geographer of the Year competition.