Curriculum and Subjects

Curriculum

Curriculum Policy 

Our aspirations for our students:

A curriculum exists for those it serves.  If our curriculum is successful, it will allow our students when they leave us to “Be The Best They Can Be.”

Our curriculum is underpinned by our values, and as such we seek to ensure our students show the following characteristics when they leave our institutions:

Responsibility:

They will understand their place in society, valuing their own contributions to social and economic activity and be always dedicated to lifelong learning and enjoyment of their endeavours.

Our children will be self-motivated to drive their own learning and fully understand the role they can play as citizens of their school, their local community and their world. Our learners understand the different needs of others and believe they can make a difference. Across our Trust we constantly seek to forge, sustain and deepen our relationships to provide the best we can for our children.

Respect:

British values underpin beliefs and actions. Our children will be tolerant and respectful, taking care of others and valuing personal and shared resources. They will be understanding and reflective; being willing to reason and accept new people, new ideas and new challenges. They will make a meaningful contribution to their communities and families.

We all acknowledge people are good at different things and that we can all learn from each other. We show care for the environment and have the highest expectations of our own behaviours in how we interact with people with different beliefs.

Resilience:

They will understand and embrace challenges, be continual with effort in the face of adversity. As a result our children will develop their own self-esteem and self-respect enabling them to cope with challenge and to accept that personal growth comes from taking risks and experiencing failure. They will develop problem solving skills and self- help strategies to live a fulfilling and healthy life. They will be given opportunities across the curriculum to demonstrate perseverance, build aspirations for the future and experience challenge.

Intent

Powerful Knowledge and The Best In Everyone

Our aim is to provide an excellent education for all our students; an education which brings out the best in all of them and prepares them for success in life.  Our curriculum is designed to provide children with the core knowledge they need for success in education and later life, to maximise their cognitive development, to develop the whole person and the talents of the individual and to allow all children to become active and economically self-sufficient citizens.  The education we provide is designed to endow our students with “powerful knowledge:”

• We want our students to be able to predict, explain and to envisage alternatives.
• We will enable our students to grasp knowledge about where they live, surpassing the knowledge that students acquire through everyday life.
• We will teach concepts that are systematically related to each other so that students are able to generalise and think beyond particular contexts.
• We will ensure students acquire specialised knowledge developed by distinguished groups with a clear focus and field of enquiry. Students will be taught by qualified subject specialists whose aim is to pass on knowledge and understanding from the leading experts such as mathematicians, scientists, novelists and musicians.

By drawing on the best that’s been thought, said and done in each subject, we hope that our curriculum enables children to appreciate and participate in the full richness of the human experience.

Key Stage 3

At Key Stage 3, the curriculum is broad and balanced. Pupils are given experience in linguistic, mathematical, scientific, technological, human and social, physical and aesthetic and creative education through the core and extended curriculum. All pupils also follow a course of PSHE.

We are committed to ensure that all children experience a positive classroom learning experience built upon high expectations. Tutor groups are crafted to create mixed ability classes, which students are taught in for a number of subjects across the academy. This means that the tutor, as well as the Year Lead, can support their tutor family to be successful in their curriculum journey and offer guidance to support the classroom learning environment.  We are committed to ensure that all children experience a positive classroom learning environment built upon high expectations and therefore mixed ability classes, within a mixed ability banding, will allow students to be rewarded for their hard work and dedication. Additionally mixed ability grouping at KS3 prevents students from becoming ‘stuck’ in a rigid system or from losing confidence in their abilities due to being placed in ability bands or classes.

In English and Maths children will be set in ability classes on the basis of performance and with clear opportunities available for all pupils to move up or down sets following routine assessment windows and teacher assessment. This ensures that we put our learner at the heart of the curriculum by routinely assessing their setting within core subjects.

Nurture – 7 and 8 students who are struggling to access mainstream school or have a curriculum gap in English / Maths are supported with the nurture route. This means that significantly scaffolded lessons take place in the nurture room for English and Maths. Students also have 2 lessons of social studies a week to support their eventual integration into the classroom. Other lessons, listed below, occur in the academy with students joining their future tutor groups as part of their learning and integration into the mainstream timetable.

Key Stage 4

At the end of the three year Key Stage 3, students then begin a 14-19 programme of study.  The academy’s programme of study is developing and is moving to become highly ‘personalised’ to meet students’ individual needs and aspirations. At the end of Year 9, students choose from a number of different pathways, including vocational offers which leads to the world of work.

A range of GCSE and BTEC subjects are offered at Key Stage 4. KS4 groups work primarily towards GCSE qualifications. The KS4 curriculum is a mixture of 5 Core subjects and 3 Option subjects. All KS4 students are encouraged to take at least one EBACC subject with blue band encouraged to take more.