Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

Our whole school intent is based on our values of ambition, confidence, curiosity, leadership, and respect. As a result our curriculum intent is summarised in the two points below:

  • A broad and balanced curriculum which produces ambitious, confident, curious and respectful students who can lead and contribute positively to the wider community.

  • A curriculum that evolves to continually meet the needs of all students to enable them to achieve successful outcomes.

This curriculum intent is at the heart of all decisions taken; including the knowledge taught, the skills developed and the curriculum offer that we provide at Key Stages 4 and 5. It is this intent that enables us to ensure that our curriculum is tailored to the needs of our students.

Our subject teams have exemplified what this whole school intent should be, applied within their subject areas, which ensures that all aspects of our curriculum are appropriately sequenced, building on prior learning and aligned to the same goal.

Curriculum Principles

  • Clear progress over five years, where students learn more, know more and remember more.

  • Additional time is given to English and Mathematics to ensure that students have the essential skills needed for life and to access the full curriculum.

  • Targeted support and additional challenge to ensure that provision is in place to enable all students make progress in line with national expectations.

  • Zero narrowing of the curriculum for SEND students, whenever appropriate.

  • Drop-down Days to address SMSC principles and raise aspirations.

  • Additional time will be offered through an extra-curricular programme.

For each area of the curriculum, we have Curriculum Learning Leaders who are highly skilled and passionate that our students receive the best experience of the subject possible, with teaching staff who are continuously developing their practice, ensuring that students learn more, know more and remember more.

 

Curriculum Implementation:

In order to fulfil our ideals, our five-year model requires students to engage with a wide range of subjects in Key Stage 3 and then provides a more bespoke approach through our “future choices” in Key Stage 4.

The implementation of our curriculum is driven by quality first teaching and learning in the classroom, led by highly skilled teachers. In Key Stage 3 (years 7 to 9), the majority of subjects are taught in mixed ability groups. Learning Leaders ensure that learning is sequential through schemes of learning that are linear and demanding. Learning is reviewed through a regular assessment cycle, with 'Feedforward' for improvement enabling students to take action to improve their work to enable rapid progress.

More details about our Key Stage 3 curriculum can be found here.

In Key Stage 4, students continue with the core curriculum and choose four additional subjects, one of which must be History or Geography, which build on knowledge, skills and understanding developed in the Key Stage 3 curriculum.

More details about our Key Stage 4 curriculum can be found here