Our Formal Curriculum Intent

Our Formal Curriculum seeks to build our students’ knowledge and understanding of a broad range of subject disciplines.

We aim to empower every student to see beyond the everyday and construct meanings about the world they live in – enabling them to apply this learning in school, through success in qualifications, and beyond, both now and in the future.

We hope that our students will use this powerful knowledge in their own unique way to make a difference for the better to the world that we live in.

Powerful knowledge:

We believe that:

Each subject makes a unique and important contribution to the building of powerful knowledge and cultural capital
A curriculum that is inclusive, including and representative of diverse voices best empowers our students to flourish in the world of the twenty-first century.

Powerful understanding:

We want our students (and their parents and carers) to understand:

That every subject is founded upon big ideas – these are the core concepts, principles, theories, themes, areas or processes that are the focal points through which curriculum, teaching and assessment in the subject are organised
The ‘big picture’ of how the knowledge and big ideas of each subject fit together
The way that learning is sequenced in each subject to build understanding over the course of a coherent Curriculum Journey
How and when students’ progression through their Curriculum Journeys will be assessed

Powerful learning:

We want our students to gain at least substantial knowledge of their curriculum so that their knowledge can be recalled and applied in the future as part of their understanding about the world.

We therefore want our students to:

Build fluency in every aspect of their whole curriculum
Build fluency in all the subjects they study: both in Knowing what and Knowing how to
Build fluency across the subjects that they study so that they can develop broad and deep understanding of the world around and beyond us

All of our subjects consider the following things carefully:

The unique contribution of each subject to building powerful	This can be found in the subject rationale
The ‘big picture’ of how the knowledge of each subject fits together	This can be found in the subject knowledge framework
The way that learning is sequenced in each subject to build understanding	This can be found in the subject's curriculum journey (what students learn and when)
How and when students’ progression through their Curriculum Journeys will be assessed	This can be found in the subject's assessment framework
Key knowledge to build understanding and fluency	This can be found in the subject's Knowledge Organisers

To find out more:

All of our subjects share this thinking and these documents here: