As Steve Brace, Head of Education at the RGS, comments,

These awards typically go to students in the top independent and private sector schools.

This included the likes of Eton College and Charterhouse for 2016. But for AQA A Level Geography last year, our own Katie Howard achieved the highest total score out of some 18,000 students. This capped an astonishing 2016 for Katie having already gained 4 A*s at A Level in the summer with Maths, Further Maths, Psychology and Geography, before going onto Bath University. 

The school were fortunate that Katie could break away from her busy University programme to return to Highlands School to be presented with her award by Steve Brace from the Royal Geographical Society, with Katie’s old Geography teachers and Head Teacher,  Mr Goddard.

Katie was naturally very excited when the news of the award came through and reminisced on the variety of field trip case studies that supported the course, from the local explorations to the River Lee and Enfield town to the residential week in Barcelona. Her key piece of advice to current students was to,

Ensure you start your revision early and work on how you best revise. For me it was revision cards and even summary cards condensing the revision cards down further.

Neill Kedward (Head of Humanities) at Highlands is justifiably proud of Katie’s achievement and  notes that,

She was an exceptional student from early on in Geography and had already gained an A* at GCSE in Year 9. We knew Katie must have been up with the very best Geographers at A Level as she gained 400/400 in total, and it was a pleasant surprise for news of this award to come through this month.

Liz Wycherley ( Head of Geography) believes this should encourage more students to challenge themselves to excel and says,

In what has been another strong set of results at A Level Geography, Katie always focussed on her learning and how to improve her understanding further and would always take on board feedback. She has been a credit to the school and will no doubt continue her academic success at university.

For more information about these awards – and the other superb work by the RGS - please check out the Royal Geographical Society’s website where it is currently in the sections “Latest News” and “Excellence Awards”.