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The theme for the Young Geographer of the Year competition 2024 is:

Choose Geography

Why should we Choose Geography?

There has never been a better or more important time to study geography.

Geography helps you to make sense of the world around you. It's hands on, relevant, and fun. Whatever your passion for the world – fascination with landscapes or concerns about sustainability – geography will provide you with knowledge and transferable skills that will reward you personally and advance you professionally.

The Society invites you to create your own #ChooseGeography poster to promote the value of choosing geography at school, in further study and in the workplace, linking geographical skills to real people and jobs that make a difference. We are looking for eye catching, creative and informative posters that promote geography as an excellent choice, highlighting its relevance and demonstrating how studying geography can help you understand the world we live in and the ‘big issues’ that we face as a society.

Your posters should include details of why geography is a useful and relevant subject to study, why studying geography matters and how it can help you to understand a range of ideas and concepts. We also want to hear about the skills that geographers have that make them stand out from the crowd, and where geography can take you. Geographers work in a wide range of careers and employment sectors, so your poster should highlight some of the jobs that geographers do and demonstrate how geographers make a difference. We also want to hear what parts of geography you find the most interesting and useful to study and why!

Entering the competition 

The competition has four categories.

  • Key Stage 2 (pupils aged 7-11)
  • Key Stage 3 (pupils aged 11-14)
  • Key Stage 4 or GCSE (pupils aged 14-16)
  • Key Stage 5 or A Level (pupils aged 16-18)

Students should enter the Key Stage category they will be in on 30 June 2024. For example, if you are/were in Year 9 in June 2024, you should submit as a KS3 entry.

There are two submission pathways. We will be asking participants to provide details of their school type when they submit their entry, and participants will need to fill in the correct online form that matches their school type and then upload their documents into the correct file area. Entries submitted into the wrong school type folder when uploading may be discounted. We will be selecting one winner and one highly commended entry for each age category from entries from state funded schools, and one winner and one highly commended entry for each age category from entries from independent and fee paying international schools. For international schools that are NOT fee paying and ARE state funded, please apply as a state funded school.

The deadline for receipt of all entries is Friday 4 October 2024 at 5.00pm.  All winners and highly commended students will be invited to an Awards Ceremony at the Society in London on Friday 29 November 2024. 

Submissions can be made by individual students or teachers. Teacher and school contact details must be provided.

Important information regarding images: Any images used on the posters MUST have the relevant permissions. Please do not just take images from the internet without getting the correct permissions from the image owner. We recommend that sites such as Unsplash, Pixabay and Flickr are used. All images must be credited on the poster. Entries may be discounted if we are unable to guarantee that the images used are copyright free or have the correct permissions to be published in such a way.

Submit your entries

Step 1: For state funded schools

Step 1: For independent and fee paying international schools

Please ensure that you:

  1. Use the correct form above for your school type
  2. Do not submit your details into this form until you are ready to also upload your entries into our file system (ie there is no need to pre-register to take part).
  3. Refer to our guidelines document (in the downloads box) for full information.

We request that entries are submitted in good time and not left until the final submission day to be uploaded. 

File nameFiles

File type

Size

Download

Young Geographer of the Year 2024 competition guidelines

.pdf

283 KB

YGOTY entry commendation certificate

.doc

968 KB

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