ABSTRACT
Geographical education in the state primary and secondary schools of England and Wales in the 1990s is dominated by the contents of a series of reports emanating from the Geography Working Group (GWG) set up under the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA). Each report has been modified either by the GWG itself, by the Secretaries of State for Education, or as a result of the Dearing Report. The Final Report (June 1990) proposed seven Attainment Targets (ATs) while the wording of the Programmes of Study (PoS) was modified to show how these could contribute to geographical enquiry, geographical skills, and places and themes, within each Key Stage. However, the National Curriculum Council decided to reduce the ATs to five by combining three area studies targets into one called ‘Knowledge and Understanding of Places’.
