Curriculum Purpose

Curriculum Purpose Statement

“Excellence with Integrity and Equity”

Our curriculum purpose framework provides a rationale for learning that helps us, as a trust, to focus our strategic thinking, our school improvement priorities and our allocation of time and resources.

In line with our values, we are clear that we want to provide all our young people with learning that inspires and which enables all to achieve excellence. In the pursuit of this we will be brave innovators, recognising the value of working together to improve outcomes for all. Furthermore, we are determined to pursue these ambitions with integrity – where the subjects studied are those that provide our learners with the best that has been thought and said and where they are prepared for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of the adult world.

We also believe that excellence should be complemented by equity: central to the work of our schools is the provision for our most vulnerable learners including the disadvantaged and those with special educational needs or disabilities. Empowered by this curriculum we will achieve outcomes that drive social mobility and give everyone freedom of choice throughout their lives.

 

Curriculum Principles

• Across our trust, the curriculum will be designed to ensure our young people thrive, achieve and flourish. It will enable them to understand what it is to be human and equip them for life so that they become kind and model citizens. It will not only develop our young people academically but socially, emotionally, culturally, physically, creatively and spiritually. Our commitment to providing learners with a wide range of extra-curricular clubs and activities will add depth and breadth to our provision and allow our learners to follow their hobbies and interests outside of the formal curriculum. We will ensure that we engage our learners in an ambitious and high-quality careers programme that, in our secondaries, meets the requirements of the “Baker clause” and Gatsby benchmarks, encouraging them to be aspirational and ambitious so that they can secure a bright future and enjoy fulfilling careers.

 

• Through our curriculum - and our commitment to evidenced-based pedagogy - learning is the foundation of every lesson. Our approaches to teaching and assessment will be based on the latest research.  We pay attention to how the brain and memory works. Our teachers plan learning so that it is clearly sequenced, presnt the curriculum so that it is intelligible to young minds and use assessment to expose learners’ thinking and to adapt their teaching. Excellence in learning for all is the outcome. These approaches are supported by trust-wide systems for teacher professional development and quality assurance that drive continuous improvement.

 

• Our knowledge-rich curriculum will be designed to ensure the very best academic outcomes for our young people and at its heart will be our schools’ determination to achieve excellence with equity and integrity. We strive to bring advantage to the disadvantaged, where barriers to learning are successfully overcome and where there are no limits to the achievement and ambition of all our learners.