Cambridge IGCSE Geography Tutors Online

Cambridge IGCSE Geography is syllabus 0460. This page works from the syllabus for exams in 2025 and 2026. Exams are available in the June and November series, and also in the March series in India only.

All candidates take three components, and all candidates are eligible for grades A* to G. There is no Core and Extended tier, so every student sits the same papers.

The first two are fixed. Paper 1 is Geographical Themes and Paper 2 is Geographical Skills. The third is a choice: candidates take either Component 3, Coursework, or Paper 4, Alternative to Coursework. Both are worth 27.5% and both carry 60 marks, but one is assessed inside the school and the other is an examined paper.

The weightings are not equal thirds, and one of them looks odd until you read the note. Paper 1 is worth 45% and carries 75 marks, but those 75 marks are weighted to 100 marks. Paper 2 is worth 27.5% and carries 60 marks. The third component is also worth 27.5% and carries 60 marks.

Paper 1 lasts 1 hour 45 minutes. Candidates answer three questions, each worth 25 marks, and they must answer one question from each section, so all three themes are examined and none can be avoided.

Paper 2 lasts 1 hour 30 minutes, carries 60 marks and is worth 27.5%. Candidates answer all the questions. As the name suggests, this is a skills paper rather than a content paper, and the weightings confirm it: Paper 2 is 11 per cent AO1, 80 per cent AO2 and 9 per cent AO3. Four fifths of that paper is skills and analysis, which means maps, graphs, photographs, data and the interpretation of them.

Paper 4, the Alternative to Coursework, lasts 1 hour 30 minutes, carries 60 marks and is worth 27.5%. Candidates answer two compulsory questions, completing a series of written tasks. These tasks mirror the coursework enquiry, so a student on this route is still doing fieldwork thinking, just writing about it under exam conditions instead of producing a project.

Component 3, the Coursework route, is a centre-based assessment worth 60 marks. Candidates complete one assignment set by teachers of up to 2000 words. The assignment may be based on physical geography, human geography, or an interaction between the two, but it must be clearly related to one or more of the subject themes. There should be enough variety and differentiation of tasks, and opportunity for individual initiative, to fulfil the assessment criteria at all levels of achievement. The syllabus also notes that the time candidates spend on the assignment should reflect the component's 27.5 per cent weighting.

The coursework marks are divided cleanly, which makes the assignment easy to plan. There are five criteria at 12 marks each: AO1 knowledge with understanding, AO2 observation and collection of data, AO2 organisation and the presentation of data, AO2 analysis and interpretation, and AO3 judgement and decision-making covering conclusion and evaluation. So half the marks are for handling data and half are for knowing the content, drawing conclusions and evaluating.

The subject content is arranged into three themes: Population and settlement, The natural environment, and Economic development. The syllabus states that the themes are designed to develop an understanding of natural and human environments.

Theme 1, Population and settlement, covers population dynamics, migration, population structure, population density and distribution, settlements including rural and urban and service provision, urban settlements, and urbanisation.

Theme 2, The natural environment, covers earthquakes and volcanoes, rivers, coasts, weather, and climate and natural vegetation.

Theme 3, Economic development, covers development, food production, industry, tourism, energy, water, and environmental risks of economic development.

The syllabus also publishes a list of suggested enquiry questions, each mapped to a topic, and these are worth reading because they show the level of thinking the course expects. Examples include asking to what extent the physical landscape has influenced settlement patterns in an area, whether pedestrian and traffic patterns vary within the central business district of a local town, how the pattern of land use varies with distance from the centre of a settlement, to what extent an urban area matches the Burgess concentric ring model of urban land use, how and why housing types differ in residential environments, and how and why the height of buildings varies with distance from the central business district.

On the physical side, the suggested enquiries include whether river velocity increases downstream, whether the bedload of a local river becomes smaller and more rounded downstream, how far a river's characteristics fit the Bradshaw model, whether pollution increases as a river flows downstream, whether the size of beach material gets larger towards the top of a beach nearer to the cliff, and whether the direction of the wind and waves influences the size and location of pebbles on a beach. These are real fieldwork questions rather than exam-style prompts, and they show that the course is about testing ideas against data.

The assessment objectives are three. AO1 is knowledge with understanding, covering the processes including human actions that contribute to the development of physical, economic and social environments and their effects on the landscape, spatial patterns and interactions within those environments, the relationships between human activity and the environment, the importance of scale whether local, regional or global, and the changes that occur through time in places, landscapes and spatial distribution. AO2 is skills and analysis. AO3 is judgement and decision-making.

The overall weightings are AO1 at 30 per cent, AO2 at 52 per cent and AO3 at 18 per cent of the qualification. Skills and analysis is the dominant objective by a distance.

The per component weightings explain why the papers feel different. Paper 1 is 48 per cent AO1, 30 per cent AO2 and 22 per cent AO3, so it is the content paper. Paper 2 is 11 per cent AO1, 80 per cent AO2 and 9 per cent AO3, so it is almost entirely a skills paper. Component 3 and Paper 4 are 20 per cent AO1, 60 per cent AO2 and 20 per cent AO3, sitting between the two.

A student who knows the content well but cannot read a map, interpret a graph or use a photograph will do well on Paper 1 and badly on Paper 2, and Paper 2 plus the third component together make up more than half of the qualification. That is the most useful thing to understand about this course.

The qualification is graded A*, A, B, C, D, E, F or G, with A* the highest and G the lowest. A candidate whose performance does not meet the standard required for grade G is ungraded, which is reported on the statement of results but not on the certificate.