Led by Shahed Ahmed OBE, Elmhurst Primary School is a successful community school, graded ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted since 2006, and designated as one of the 35 National Maths Hubs due to its high levels of attainment in Mathematics. Elmhurst is also a teaching school and leads the Elmhurst Teaching School Alliance, a collaborative network of over 20 local primary, secondary and FE colleges.

As part of the Primary Leadership Programme, we are exploring what high-quality subject expertise looks like in the context of Geography. Geographical learning can very easily become cloudy within primary curricula, as a consequence of the primacy of Maths and English, as well as teachers' undeveloped understanding of what geography actually is.

For our research project, we will examine the effects of boosting teachers' engagement with academic geography, through the provision of a wide range of additional training opportunities. We will then look at what impact a teacher's improved subject knowledge has upon pupil learning across the school.

The school has a rich, humanistic and challenging humanities curriculum, exploring migration, refugeedom, religious diversity and climate change, and Elmhurst's teaching and learning is enriched further through working with The Prince's Teaching Institute.

As Elmhurst has developed its teaching and learning of global citizenship, we have worked with pupils to identify different ways of using our knowledge of what is happening in the world to enact change. From these discussions, pupils and teachers developed the idea of regular fundraising and donation drives for the refugees currently in Calais. Pupils have been learning about the countries of origins of refugees in the camp, and have been mobilising their families to donate. Teachers from the school regularly cross over to Calais to donate the pupils' gifts directly to the schools and charitable organisations working in the camp.

The lesson we are teaching to our own pupils is that when knowledge and action come together, then change can come about.