GCSE Geography Edexcel A Fieldwork

My GCSE fieldwork was a day in Wakefield!

The place depends on your school I assume. Mine was in Swanage for 3 days!

So was mine!


My fieldwork was relatively similar - we stayed at this residential fieldwork centre for two nights. On the first day, we arrived by coach, went to rooms, got given a general intro and information (rules etc) and we were told the plan and timetable. On the second, we went to Swanage Bay and Studland Bay for physical fieldwork (e.g. measuring height on each side of groynes, CISA surveys for cliffs, measuring moisture/wind, quadrats...). We ate breakfast and tea at the place, but were given a packed lunch or allowed to go to restaurants - we had total freedom from 12:00 to 2:00. On the third and final day we went to Boscombe for human geography fieldwork, and we were shown around a bit, given booklets, and set free to do it ourselves, wander round... Then we went back to school by coach after our lunch break.

It probably depends on your school? For me, we all had to write a list of 5 people we wanted to be with, and then the teachers sorted out the rooms. However, my year's rooms didn't correspond to friendship groups, as some people were split up. The teachers aimed to have a balance between well-behaved and troublemakers in each room.

Everyone was in a room with at least one friend (I was with 2 friends and 3 other people), but room sizes varied. I think the smallest was 5, and the largest was 10. However, your school probably will have significantly smaller rooms - especially with COVID-19 and all that (if it still goes ahead).

Don't be scared! I personally loved the fieldwork part - even though I had to share a room. Where I went, the bathrooms were (thankfully) individual ones, and the showers were cubicles. And although I had a completely different sleeping schedule from everyone else (I was asleep an hour before lights out and woke up at 5:00 because I'm weird like that), I still managed to get enough sleep. And I got to spend lots of time with my friends, as we had lots of breaks, and my best friend also woke up really early, which was fun!

That's just my experience though - different schools do all the admin stuff differently! But don't worry - you'll be fine. It's only a few days at most anyway and teachers realise more than you think about friendship groups and stuff.

How many days was the fieldwork for?

I did mine towards the beginning of year 11, towards the end of September (to ensure that everyone had time to settle in, but also before GCSEs got in the way too much)