The architecture of our curriculum model designs the structure and allocation of our subject and wider curriculum delivery across each year group and key stage. Our curriculum model is designed to ensure we effectively deliver our Trust’s shared curriculum intent by providing a broad and balanced curriculum and rich educational experience. We also design our academy’s curriculum model to best meet the needs of our students and locality reflecting upon courses that support the local and national job market and those that have been positive destination subjects for our students.
Our academy’s Curriculum Model is designed entirely around the needs of the student; it is highly personalised and centred on advanced learning skills and knowledge while maximising the opportunity to succeed. It is an agile, responsive curriculum that grows with the student, adapting to their individual circumstances and future career plans.
Our ambitious curriculum challenges whilst providing additional opportunities for students who decide on alternative pathways throughout their secondary education. This empowers students to gain real life-chances, while focusing heavily on the student's wellbeing and enjoyment of life-long learning.
The rationale for our academy’s curriculum model is that we believe students should be given a broad range of experiences in order to discover their talents while also being provided with the opportunities to specialise, unlimited, and wherever possible linked to their career aspirations.
We offer a curriculum that truly meets students’ needs by allowing them to follow a pathway that is as unique as they are; it provides new experiences, real life-enhancing skills, deep engaging knowledge, and opens opportunities to specialise in the areas they need, without compromising other future destinations.
A desire to study the Full English Baccalaureate should not prevent skilled learners from studying multiple disciplines from within the arts, or those with a passion for languages from studying additional languages. There should also be pathways for those with a desire for work-based experiences to be able to follow a programme of workplace provision without impacting on any of their other courses.
It is even possible within our curriculum model for students to utilise their curriculum time to deepen their learning by selecting non-certified, personal development opportunities such as pursuing excellence within music or the arts, exploring career aspirations, or further studying areas of interest simply to enhance their enjoyment of learning.
Our curriculum provides the space for students to explore, develop and excel; they are able to experience learning on a greater level: developing their character, meeting challenging aspirations and securing the strongest of foundations.
By creating a curriculum that is made for the individual we ensure we put students first, raise standards and transform lives.
Our curriculum reflects the ambitious intentions of the National Curriculum. Students begin their secondary experience studying a rich, academic programme of English, maths, and science in which they will continue through a single five-year curriculum. They follow a broad range of subjects including: geography, history, modern foreign languages, physical education, computer science, religious education and citizenship studied through our RE/Life programme and a range of creative and expressive arts including art, music, drama and technology subjects such as catering and engineering as well as vocational courses such as hair and beauty, imedia, enterprise and health and social care.
Throughout our students’ entire secondary education, this curriculum model ensures an entitlement that is enhanced with opportunities, through our elective curriculum, for subject mastery and further breadth where we offer a range of clubs, enrichments and societies; this will include sports clubs, elite sports, performing arts and subject clubs. Students are encouraged to study a broad range of subjects to deepen their educational experience and build a solid foundation of subject knowledge and skills.
Academic and technical study at Level 1 / Level 2, including GCSE, are usually studied across two years offering a wide entitlement to subjects including those which make up the Full English Baccalaureate[1]; GCSE in one English (literature or language), mathematics, two sciences, including computer science, one humanities subject (geography or history), and a modern foreign language. There is opportunity for all to study either triple or combined sciences and a wide selection of open subjects are offered including a range of creative and expressive arts subjects, religious education, technology subjects, physical education, social sciences including Enterprise etc.
During Key Stage 3, students are provided with expert advice and guidance to enable them to start to identify appropriate courses for their goals, and interests.
The National Curriculum is enhanced in Year 9 and 10, where students are coached in Learning Brilliance, a unique course aimed at enhancing the learning experience through a series of short-term achievements that develop long-term learning skills. This course supports each child's social, emotional and mental wellbeing alongside their academic work; it instils a joy of, and love for, learning by centreing on the aspects of fun, creativity and imagination that can often be pushed aside by students as they respond to the stresses they associate with the final years of their qualifications.
Using inclusive memory techniques, the Learning Brilliance programme teaches and reinforces learning curriculum subject content via new techniques for memory training that enables learners to bypass the high levels of repetition usually associated with learning new material and instead equipping them to absorb new information at an accelerated rate, which then allows for a greater, broader knowledge base upon which understanding and associations can then be built.
Learning Brilliance delivers memory habits at a level that is fundamentally important to us all; showing that there is no such thing as a poor memory, only a trained or untrained memory, and allowing students to explore highly challenging and unique ways of approaching learning while strengthening their creativity, self-esteem and mental wellbeing. This programme then applies the memory techniques to knowledge that students would benefit from knowing, both socially and academically irrespective of the option subjects they intend taking, embedding this to broaden and deepen their knowledge base providing an exciting foundation upon which to hook new levels of understanding and awareness, ultimately expanding their cultural capital.
In Year 10, all students study either geography or history (or both if so desired). They are also encouraged to take a language; and in doing so, engage with the Full English Baccalaureate; suite of subjects. We are ambitious in our intent for a majority of students to study this important set of subjects. In exceptional cases, where students’ ambitions change to match their increasing self-belief within their final years, our curriculum allows students who have not chosen to follow the Full English Baccalaureate, an additional opportunity to study the missing course in their final year, securing a suite of qualifications to match their commitment to learning.
Additional support for English and maths is available throughout the 5 year curriculum, for those students who need it. Students entering Year 11 are all provided with additional English and maths studies to secure the knowledge base they require without detriment to other subjects they essentially need.
Every learner receives core provision of English and maths, plus additional periods of personalised English and personalised maths to provide the scope to deepen their knowledge, and secure and enhance their understanding, irrespective of their ability level.
In Year 11, students prepare for their post-16 study destinations and enhance their knowledge and skills so that they gain the academic passport required for their next steps. They choose to supplement or advance their specialism, by following their interests to gain a specialism in an unexamined subject that might support their future study or career. Equally, they can consolidate an existing subject so that they have the best possible choices available to them as they leave our care.
The strength of our curriculum is its ability to be highly personalised to every student's needs, allowing each to shape their own progression route, build high levels of self-belief, nourish their mental health, and instil a passion for learning that will extend far beyond their time at school.