Our knowledge rich curriculum is broad, balanced, demanding and progressive. It is carefully planned to ensure that content is regularly revisited so that learning ‘sticks’ and students know more and remember more over time.
Our aim, through the curriculum, is to develop:
- a ‘love and passion for learning’.
- enquiring and inquisitive minds;
- the wider ‘soft-skills’ required to be a productive member of the workforce;
- an understanding, through the careers programme, of the opportunities available to students once they leave school;
- an understanding of ‘British Values’ and the implications for life in modern day Britain;
- students spiritual, moral, social and cultural learning.
Our curriculum is constructed on the following principles to support the above; namely that:
- acquiring subject specific knowledge is key for students to be able to solve complex problems;
- students need to practice the knowledge and skills they have learnt in lessons so that they can use them when they need;
- frequent opportunities are built into lessons to enable pupils to recall and retrieve previous learning, so that it can be embedded and applied with confidence;
- the vast majority of students should be entered for the English Baccalaureate - as this provides an academically broad and balanced curriculum;
- knowledge is carefully scaffolded with new learning building on the strong foundations of previous knowledge. This is achieved through careful curriculum planning;
- development of language is the remit of all subjects;
- all students should experience a careers education based on the Gatsby benchmarks that underpin a world class careers education;
- the British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect of those with different faiths and beliefs are taught explicitly and then lived and experienced through the life of the school;
- SMSC, RSE and PSHE are embedded into pastoral and curriculum programmes;
- our curriculum meets and exceeds the demands of the National Curriculum, with all pupils studying all subjects until the end of year 9.
In KS4 all students study a minimum of eight GCSE qualifications including English Language and English Literature, mathematics and science, geography and / or history and most a modern foreign language. All students continue to study physical education and personal development.
The teaching of all subjects within the curriculum is fully compliant with our duties under the Equality Act 2010 and Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 as exemplified in the NELT Equality and Diversity statement and objectives, the Academy SEND Policy and reported through the SEND Information Report.
To find out more about our curriculum, please contact the school office at enquiries@ryehillsacademy.co.uk