Our curriculum is carefully planned to ensure pupils have access to a broad range of learning experiences whilst enabling them to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to progress to their next stage in education, training or employment. It is sequenced to build upon and extend prior learning, and to ensure that, over time, pupils can remember what they have been taught and apply that learning to new contexts. To support this, we have implemented some learning principles across the academy.

This is an activity which revisits prior learning to check pupils can remember what has been previously taught and focuses on key learning points identified within each subject’s curriculum plan.

Lessons regularly end with a “Demonstrate” activity which pupils complete independently. This enables teachers to check pupils’ understanding and identify misconceptions. The following lesson begins with a “Connect” activity, where, in response to the “Demonstrate” task, pupils improve their knowledge and understanding by completing one of three differentiated activities.

Provided at the beginning of each unit of work, the Learning Journey makes explicit to pupils what will be learned, why it is important and what will come next. It makes explicit to pupils the sequence of learning and the skills which will be developed. This also provides pupils with an aide-memoire, enabling them to quickly find work they have completed on a particular topic should they want to apply it to a new concept.

Pupils in Years 7-10 are formally assessed in the core curriculum subjects of English, mathematics, science, French, history & geography in the Autumn and Summer terms. These results are reported to pupils and parents and are used to identify gaps in knowledge which must be closed.