ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ

The 2025 Rex Walford Award is now closed for entries.

For this year’s Rex Walford Award, we asked trainee or early career geography teachers to create a short scheme of work which encouraged their students to create their own poster (or Esri StoryMap for KS5) on the theme ‘Understanding Islands’ and enter it into our Young Geographer of the Year competition 2025.

We were interested to see lesson plans and accompanying resources that linked directly to the curriculum and encouraged students to think about:

• Islands that demonstrate the geographical processes, topics and themes that they learn about through geography.
• The similarities and differences between islands, what connects them and what makes them unique.
• How the unique geography of islands can differ depending on socio-economic, political, environmental and physical aspects.
• The challenges that islands face, and the solutions presented to them at local, national and international scales.

Competition details

The Rex Walford Award is for trainees or teachers who are in an early career stage (ideally first five years), including students enrolled on a PGCE, SCITT or School Direct programmes, alongside Teach First geographers, NQTs and colleagues at any other early career stage. 

Entrants were asked to produce a scheme of work, including at least three lessons, that explored the theme of ‘Understanding Islands’. We were also be interested to see (where possible) examples of pupils’ work that had resulted from the lessons, and hoped that entrants encourage their students to create and submit entries for our Young Geographer of the Year competition 2025 which focused on the same theme.

The scheme of work created could be aimed at any Key Stage eligible to enter the Young Geographer of the Year competition, and must have included:

• A short scheme of work
• At least 3 lesson plans
• Resources to accompany those lessons
• Examples of pupil work if possible

The winner of the Rex Walford Award 2025 will be announced in early December 2025.

The winning entry will be hosted as a resource on our website.

Please read the guidelines document for further information.