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This article draws on the ndings of a questionnaire inquiry into the factors in uencing pupils' uptake of history and geography at GCSE. It argues that although many pupils enjoyed their learning at Key Stage 3 and that each subject holds some intrinsic interest in its own right, many pupils believe that there is relatively little purpose in pursuing the subjects beyond this stage. Their understanding of the relative 'usefulness' of both history and geography in their future lives is limited to direct and naive reference to forms of employment. Their understanding of the wider contribution each can make to their future lives is disappointingly uninformed. This limited understanding has an impact upon option decisions: if pupils cannot perceive any short term and longer term appreciation of the value of each subject then they are unlikely to want to pursue it in further study.

Since the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in the UK in 1994 much has been made in education policy of consulting with young people about their educational experiences. This article takes Arnot and Reay%s notion of pedagogic voices to provide a critical framework to examine the different voices produced within a curriculum development project entitled ‘Young Peoples’ Geographies’ (YPG). It discusses the extent to which this initiative has enabled school students to bring their own voices, and their common‐sense knowledge, to one aspect of school, namely the curriculum. I argue that particular and more inclusive pedagogic practices, coupled with developments in the academic discipline, can go some way towards enabling greater degrees of student agency in school life, while at the same time acknowledging that institutional, social and cultural constraints place limitations on both students and teachers.

O ver the last decade there has been growing research interest in identifying teaching and learning strategies that pupils perceive to be enjoyable and through which they feel they learn most effectively. However, history and geography are subject areas in which there has been 'a notable lack of research' (Lord and Harland, 2000) and there is a paucity of evidence both about pupils' perceptions of learning in these subjects and about their perceptions of the usefulness of geographical or historical study. Over the same period, concern has grown among history and geography teachers about the place and status of history and geography in the school curriculum. Declining numbers of students opting to study the subjects at GCSE (Bell, 2001) and the increased interest in vocational studies suggest that neither history nor geography any longer captures many pupils' interest or imagination. In the light of this an ongoing investigation has been taking place at the University of Nottingham into pupils' perceptions of the relevance of history and geography, and to try to identify what they enjoy or do not enjoy about studying these subjects. In the summer of 2002 a series of semi-structured interviews was conducted with twelve groups of Year 8 pupils in order to further explore pupils' opinions of learning in both subjects. These interviews build on both the reported findings of a questionnaire survey of over 1,400 Year 9 pupils in ten secondary schools conducted in 1999 (Adey and Biddulph, 2001) and semi-structured interviews conducted two years later with the same cohort of pupils when they were in Year 11 (Biddulph and Adey, 2001). The findings of both the questionnaire survey and the Year 11 interviews revealed that pupils found some aspects of both subjects enjoyable and interesting. Pupils enjoyed group work, active approaches and investigative approaches. They disliked passive learning. These findings were supported in a small-scale study by Hooper (2001), who found that in history 'practical and expressive' activities were most likely to motivate pupils. Although many pupils in the Nottingham study found enjoyment in studying history and/or geography, most found it difficult to articulate the relative usefulness of the subjects to their lives, even after two years of study at Key Stage 4. Only those pupils who had a sense of their own future aspirations,

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