Geography exams have changed...

Cambridge Assessment have published the results of some research they have done on the types of questions asked in geography exams over the years.
The following text is from a press release.

GEOGRAPHY EXAMS GO FROM PHYSICAL TO HUMAN

Geography exam papers have seen more changes in the past 10 years than in the previous 100, with the emphasis now very much on the impact of human activity on the world. That’s the finding of research looking at geography papers for 16 year olds from 1867 to 2007 by Cambridge Assessment, which is this year celebrating its 150^th anniversary.

The research looked at papers every tenth year from 1867 through to 2007. For the first 100 years papers concentrated on map skills, physical geography (natural features of the world as it is, including rock formations, plants and animals, climate and natural resources) and human geography (human activity, including agriculture, industry, and urban development) relating to different areas of the world, usually the British Isles or UK, Europe and North America.

Asia was included in 1937 and Tropical Africa in 1977. In 1927 there was one paper split into three sections whilst from 1937 to 1987 there were two papers, with little change in the structure of either paper throughout this period. Throughout, there was at least one question in each section on map skills or analysis of data.

While there was little change in the aims and purposes of studying geography over this time, there were changes based on developments in knowledge and teaching methods. This included the introduction of questions about weather systems and forecasting in 1947, fieldwork in 1967 and environmental damage and pollution in 1977.

It was not until the 1997 paper, the first GCSE paper in the study, that there was any real change to the structure of the paper. The focus now became mainly on human geography and candidates were required to look in more depth at a particular issue, often considering the impact of humans on physical geographical features, or the impact of physical features on humans. The 1997 and 2007 papers also had a larger proportion of questions on economic or environmental topics, such as greenhouse gases and climate change in 2007. There were far fewer questions about purely physical geography.