Geography has an awful lot to say about globalisation. It is an issue that has, for a number of years, dominated the outgoing A-level syllabus, and it is one that continues to direct the new four-module curriculum that the department will start teaching to the new Year 12 students in September. But globalisation is also having a dramatic impact on education - in particular the range of skills that the students will need to possess as they prepare to enter a dynamic labour market (which is, of course, itself in a constant state of flux due, again, to our old friend globalisation).

The impacts of globalisation on education are highlighted by Karl Fisch in his award-winning Shift Happens presentation. This presentation suggests that:

• Statistically there are more individuals with a high IQ (top 25%) in China than there are people in the entire North American continent, the same will shortly be true of India.
• If we use the 5% boundary (this is the scale that most British schools use to identify students as being gifted) the numbers in both of these countries still exceeds the population of the United Kingdom.
• If every single job in the US were shipped to China, China would still have a labour surplus.
• The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004.
• Today’s school leaver will have, on average, between 10 and 14 jobs during their working life.
• One out of every four workers is working for a company that they have been employed by for less than one year. If we look at those who have been employed by the same company for less than five years the figure is one in two.
• Some websites have over 100 million registered users, which, if this were their population, would make them the eleventh largest country in the world (between Japan and Mexico).
• One in eight couples who got married last year in the US met online!

Basically speaking, the job of teachers is to prepare students for a range of jobs that don’t yet exist for a range of companies that haven’t yet been founded. These jobs will require candidates to exhibit fluency with the use of changing technologies and comfort when utilising modified working practices. All of this will take place against a backdrop of competition from emerging markets the likes of which have never been witnessed before.

To help to facilitate this, the Geography Department has undergone something of a revolution over the last twelve months. Inspired by the DCSF’s (Department of Children Schools and Families) Classrooms of the Future policy document, the department has transformed itself into an interactive learning environment. The new department website (http://www.runnymede-college.com/geography) now contains all of the department’s learning resources, which includes those that are designed for the new interactive whiteboard. To help the technology natives, many resources are also included as text files (which can be imported to media players such as iPods as notes) and podcasts. These resources can be accessed by the students at any time and they allow the more-able and less-able individuals to work at their own pace. There is also a departmental focus on the learning to learn and assessment for learning initiatives, which allow students to reflect on their own learning. This is a skill that will help them in their future regardless of their chosen career, and one that helps them to enhance the creative thinking element that has always been a particular strength of the British education system.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those students who have worked so hard over the course of this academic year within this subject and also to welcome Miss Howells to the department. Finally, a special mention must go to Jonathan Israel who has chosen to study a geography degree. Good luck Jonathan, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!