A Curriculum for Learning 

Our curriculum has been designed to be fully inclusive to enable all our students to achieve excellence. This means providing our children with an ambitiously academic curriculum; one that is knowledge-rich and which introduces students to ideas and concepts beyond the National Curriculum and prescribed examination specifications. Our curriculum aims to develop memory and recall in order to equip our students with the factual knowledge they require to be able to confidently problem solve and critically reason. We believe that the acquisition of core knowledge is fundamental to the development of higher-order thinking skills and that knowledge and skills exist in a symbiotic relationship to facilitate deep, long-term learning. The curriculum is planned to ensure that the key knowledge and concepts in all subject areas taught are carefully sequenced to allow students to make progress and the development of, disciplinary literacy through identified key vocabulary in each unit of work and through the reading of complex academic texts are key components of this.

Our Big Ideas

Our ‘Big Ideas’ describe the fundamental concepts or themes that are delivered through the curriculum. They provide a conceptual framework for the substantive knowledge (core knowledge) or disciplinary knowledge (skills) that are needed for pupil progression within subject areas. Prior learning is built upon from KS2 and revisited frequently during KS3 and into KS4 through careful sequencing.  Each time these themes or concepts are delivered as part of the scheme of learning, the core knowledge base is widened and becomes more complex in theory or in the way pupils explore this and so facilitates the development of higher-order skills such as problem-solving and critical reasoning.

A Curriculum for Life

Our Curriculum for Life is designed to give our young people the opportunity to explore faith, careers, professional skills, health and wellbeing, and how their own values will impact and direct their futures. Our students have the opportunity to discuss and explore these key themes in a safe and supportive environment. Our curriculum aims to set our students’ expectations of themselves high – to challenge them and support them to ask big questions, to be open and receptive to others’ points of view and experiences, and to be their best self. We believe that for our students to be successful within and beyond their time in school they will need to have developed a high level of self-awareness, emotional intelligence and ambition – our Curriculum for Life provides them with the opportunity to do just that. During their Curriculum for Life journey our students will have the opportunity to read challenging personal development texts that will stretch their understanding of themselves and others.

Spirituality in the Curriculum

Our spirituality is our individual sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves; be it our God, our universe, or our values. Spirituality gives us a sense of meaning and purpose in life. There are four elements of spirituality that we explore through our curriculum; Self, Others, Transcendence and Beauty. Each subject area identifies opportunities where students' spirituality is developed, for example in Geography where their sense of place in the world is discussed through issues relating to environmental and natural disasters, in Science where our place in the Universe is considered or in English where ideas of self and others are explored through a range of thought provoking texts.