Belle Vue Primary School, Carlisle - Winner of the 2025/26 PTI Primary Impact Award

Belle Vue Primary School has transformed its geography curriculum following insights from its PTI training with Dr Paula Owens. Responding to pupil voice that revealed limited understanding and low engagement, the school redesigned geography to be meaningful, experiential and rooted in real-world learning.

A major success has been the implementation of a whole-school fieldwork programme, including an annual ‘Fieldwork Week’, enabling every child to act as a geographer both on-site and in the local area. From Reception pupils mapping their playground through stories, to Year 2 exploring the seaside, and Year 5 navigating a mountain walk and reflecting on landscape value, fieldwork is now progressive, purposeful and memorable.

The school has also revolutionised mapping by introducing creative and accessible approaches such as messy mapping, sheet mapping and thematic mapping. This shift has significantly improved pupils’ mapping skills and enthusiasm, evidenced by the strong response to the school-wide ‘My Perfect Place’ mapping competition.

Virtual fieldwork and new partnerships, including work with Eden Rivers Trust and Tullie House, further extend pupils’ geographical horizons. Strong subject leadership and high-quality CPD have ensured that PTI principles are embedded across the school, resulting in confident teachers and pupils who now speak knowledgeably and passionately about geography.

Belle Vue’s curriculum overhaul demonstrates the powerful impact of fieldwork, improved mapping progression and qualitative enquiry in creating a rich, engaging and truly transformative geography education.

Cardwell Primary School has been commended for the Primary Impact Award. The school significantly enhanced its Geography curriculum by embedding practical, hands-on fieldwork and adopting an investigative approach to learning. The school's aim is to make learning purposeful and relevant by using the local area, ensuring concepts transfer into long-term memory. Working closely with Year 5 teachers, they planned and delivered effective fieldwork focusing on the local area of Woolwich Arsenal, which has undergone significant change due to migration and development. The investigation, asking "How has Woolwich Arsenal changed over time?" , involved children using past and present maps, applying navigation skills, and collecting data on land use, traffic, and litter. The long-term goal is to deliver staff CPD on the rationale and progression of fieldwork.

The fieldwork had a substantial impact, equipping children with confidence in key geographical concepts like place, location, human and physical features, and cultural diversity. Crucially, the approach allowed children to draw upon and transfer knowledge from history (migration/Windrush generation) and urbanisation, explaining the causes and consequences of local change. Children concluded that Woolwich had transformed from an industrial area to a lively, diverse modern community. A Year 5 teacher confirmed that the hands-on experience led to higher levels of engagement and understanding from students, securing knowledge of settlement and land use. The Geography Day provided the school with practical activity ideas, an understanding of map skills progression, and strategies for integrating fieldwork across the curriculum.

Tregadillett Primary School has been commended for the Primary Impact Award. Following inspiration from a PTI Geography Day, the school undertook a philosophical shift to embed practical, hands-on, and outdoor learning across its entire curriculum to make education more memorable, engaging, and fun. Inspired by the power of geographical fieldwork and its focus on observing, questioning, and interpreting the world, the school extended these principles to all subjects. This cross-curricular approach transforms subjects: Science pupils conduct outdoor experiments and observe habitats; Mathematics lessons use the school grounds to measure perimeter and estimate garden produce; and History pupils physically walk through a reimagined timeline of local and global history in the playground, supporting a clearer understanding of chronology. English and Art are also enriched, with outdoor storytelling, persuasive letter writing on climate action after environmental audits, and nature-inspired land art.

The impact of this curriculum redesign has been profound, leading to increased pupil engagement and creative freedom for teachers. Crucially, the practical, sensory-rich outdoor environment has created alternative pathways for success for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), offering a less pressured, more therapeutic setting. This move has resulted in a notable increase in confidence, independence, and emotional regulation among these pupils, successfully removing barriers to the curriculum and in some cases reducing the need for formal assessments. To ensure sustainability, the school has invested in staff CPD and developed bespoke outdoor spaces, including a market garden, a forest school area, and a sensory garden, reinforcing its belief that the curriculum should be a "lived experience" for every child.

Sedbergh Primary School were commended for the BMC Award. The school has taken an exciting step to strengthen staff expertise in fieldwork, turning ideas from The PTI Hub into practical classroom experiences. A dedicated staff meeting introduced hands-on activities such as soundscapes, emotion mapping, and environmental quality surveys within the school grounds. Building on this momentum, the school launched a whole-school Geography and Maths theme week, highlighting the close connection between the two subjects. Teachers have since woven these new fieldwork techniques into long-term plans, with evidence of practical learning now shining through in pupils’ books.

The initiative has transformed the profile of Geography across the school and sparked real enthusiasm among pupils. During the theme week, every class took part in meaningful fieldwork: Year 1/2 carried out a traffic survey with a police officer using a speed gun; Year 3/4 teamed up with the Yorkshire Dales National Park to explore navigation, map reading, and tree-age measurement; and Year 5/6 surveyed local residents on Market Day about vehicle use. Thanks to PTI networking, the school even borrowed VR headsets, giving pupils an immersive experience of biomes and oceans—an activity they described as “awesome.” Impressively, 100% of pupils interviewed said they enjoyed the week and could confidently explain the fieldwork they had completed.