The purpose of our curriculum is to ensure that all students experience a broad, balanced and enriching learning journey over seven years of study. 

We aim to provide a high-quality education that matches the aspirations of our community and that develops our students as lifelong learners, equipping them for success in school and in their next steps.  Our curriculum is the lived experience, a combination of the taught curriculum and the students' wider experiences.

Across subjects, the curriculum is well planned. Key Stage 3 is broad and balanced, providing a strong foundation for later study. Pupils can choose from a wide range of options at Key Stage 4 and in the Sixth Form. 

Ofsted, 2022

Our curriculum provides a coherent framework for progression within, between and beyond subjects through which the students develop the knowledge, skills, conceptual understanding and learner attributes that they need to enter the world of work, an apprenticeship or further education as successful, confident and healthy individuals who are proud contributors to society.

The knowledge identified within our curriculum allows students to unlock future learning.  The conceptual understanding developed allows students to form their own schema – or what we sometimes refer to as the big ideas and how they connect as our understanding develops - into which they can assimilate and accommodate further learning.  Central to the learner attributes developed by our curriculum is the explicit awareness of the way in which we learn, encouraging students to reflect, improve and learn from their mistakes. Each of the subject areas has carefully sequenced these aspects of their curriculum, in order to support students understanding and development of schema.  This is further outlined on the subsequent subject pages.

Our curriculum is underpinned by the ‘Learning Journey’ as a pedagogical framework, a model based on the principles of Professor John Hattie, which have been developed by A. Griffith and M. Burns in ‘Teaching Backwards’ (2014), and in Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction.  The learning journey sets out a sequenced plan for what students need to know and be able to do, at each step of their journey.  The reaching of endpoints is planned for by the careful sequencing of learning, feedback and the opportunity to interleave prior learning.

Our curriculum carefully sequences learning, enabling students to reach the endpoints that take them to the next step in their journey.  It has an emphasis on vocabulary, developing students fluency in subject specific language.  It also has a focus on the acquisition of knowledge.  Running through the curriculum are the values of the Warlingham Learner and metacognitive approaches that explicitly explore with the students how they can become better learners.  This is to the benefit of all students and at the same time, furthers the progress of high prior attaining students.

For further information regarding the Learning Journey and Rosenshine's Principles, please click the link below.