The A Level Geography NEA (Non-Examined Assessment) forms 20% of your final grade. For new students, it can be daunting to think about your coursework. However, getting on top of the assignment early is the best way to maximise your potential marks. This post outlines how to make the most of the A Level Geography NEA experience, and some of our tips to aim for top marks.
What is the NEA?
All A Level Geography exam boards require students to conduct independent investigations as part of their course, in order to take their classroom theory into the geographical world. The A Level Geography NEA asks you to design, carry out and write up your own piece of research. You choose a question linked to something on your specification (coasts, changing places, the water and carbon cycle, whatever you’re most interested in), collect your own data to answer it, and then analyse and evaluate what you find.
Your submission will be a single report of 3,000 to 4,000 words. Go over or under that range and you won’t be penalised directly, but examiners are clear that an investigation that’s much too short or too long tends to struggle to hit the top mark bands. If it’s too short, there isn’t room to show the required depth of analysis. If it’s too long, it’s usually a sign the writing needs tightening up and the assignment isn’t concisely answering the question.
How much does it actually count for?
Across AQA, Edexcel and OCR, the A Level Geography NEA counts for 20% of your final grade, with the remaining 80% coming from your exams at the end of Year 13. This is a substantial amount of your final grade, and it’s worth getting ahead of in order to go into the exams with a solid foundation.
Choosing your title and question
The strongest investigations start with a specific, answerable question rather than a broad topic. “Investigating coastal erosion” is too broad and topic-focussed. “To what extent has coastal management altered rates of erosion between two sites in Dartmoor?” is a question you can actually collect data for. When you’re choosing yours, think about three things:
- Does it link clearly to a topic on your specification?
- Can you realistically get to the location and gather primary data that you can measure and analyse?
- Does it genuinely interest you?
The worst thing to do is choose a topic because your friends are doing it, or use a chatbot to generate questions for you. You’ll be living with and answering your question for months, so you must choose something from the course that is going to interest you.
When our founder, Leo Carr, was conducting his A Level Geography NEA, he was particularly interested in the Changing Places topic, and chose to investigate the success of a place’s rebranding.
Background reading
An important part of conducting an investigation is your background reading, or literature review. This should be included in the introduction of your coursework, to demonstrate that you have interest in the topic, and your A Level Geography NEA is going some way to contribute towards additional knowledge of the subject. Ignoring a literature review could show that you don’t have interest in your topic, and you haven’t considered existing research in defending why you are studying what you are.
Planning and data collection
Your methodology needs both primary data (collected by you, such as questionnaires, environmental measurements, land use surveys) and some secondary data for context or comparison.
Two things examiners consistently reward here:
- A clear justification for why you chose each method over the alternatives, backing up how the data collected helps you to answer your question.
- Evidence that you’ve thought about sampling: how many locations, how many respondents. Say why that number is defensible rather than just “whatever we had time for”.
Don’t skip the risk assessment either. You need to be aware of the risks there are in real-world data collection, such as the weather or natural hazards. The risk assessment is on the mark scheme, so you cannot get full marks without it.
The Write-Up: Recommended Structure
Exam Boards don’t give you a defined structure or format to write up your A Level Geography NEA. However, looking through the mark scheme, this is the structure we’d recommend:
- Introduction: your question, its geographical context, and a map of your research location.
- Literature review: the theory and existing research your investigation builds on.
- Methodology: what you did, how, and why, including sampling and any limitations you already anticipated.
- Data presentation: a variety of presentation methods, not six bar charts. Use maps, charts, graphs, tables, etc.
- Analysis: statistical tests where appropriate (like Mann-Whitney U or Spearman’s Rank), with every result explicitly linked back to your original question and to the literature you reviewed.
- Conclusion: a direct answer to your question, based on the evidence you’ve just presented.
- Evaluation: an honest look at what would make the investigation more reliable or strong next time.
Common Mistakes
The same handful of issues come up again and again in A Level Geography NEA submissions, and this is backed up by the exam boards.
First is data presentation that’s technically varied but not actually suited to the data (a scatter graph forced onto data that was never continuous). Whilst you need to vary the types of presentation that you use, you need to consider which presentation method is actually suited to the data you’ve got. This can even help you to make more convincing conclusions and analyses of your data.
Second, an analysis section that presents results without ever explicitly returning to the hypotheses or research question. Your analysis needs to directly answer and explain the hypotheses with reference to your overall question. Generic words about something geographical aren’t going to cut it; you need to stay focussed. Always refer back to your question.
Third, and most commonly, an evaluation that’s clearly been written in the last twenty minutes. Examiners don’t want a couple of rushed sentences about “the weather affecting results”. The best Geography NEA submissions take care to evaluate sampling size, methodology choices, and what a more reliable version of the investigation would look like. Remember you will be told where and for how long your data collection will take place, it’s almost never going to be perfect. Critique yourself here, it’s absolutely fine.
Conclusion
Taking a genuine interest in your A Level Geography NEA is vital, and goes beyond turning up for the data collection. Have a plan, nail your research question, and be bold in your analysis and conclusion.
Study Dog’s A Level Geography NEA course goes through each of these elements in detail, and gives you access to unseen coursework submissions. We run through each element of the assignment, and a checklist of how to reach top marks. Make sure to sign up to master your A Level Geography NEA.
