Curriculum
Curriculum Statement
Bridgemary School Curriculum Intent Statement
What is our overarching curriculum intent including links to TKAT ‘acheiving more together’ and what do you intend students leave Bridgemary School with?
We intend that our curriculum supports our Trust ambition of ‘acheiving more together. We do this by offering an exciting, broad and balanced curriculum that aims to provide all students with the core and facilitating knowledge and skills that enable them to leave our school academically, socially and morally successful. We intend that, by experiencing this curriculum, all students who leaves Bridgemary School have the qualifications, skills, knowledge and character to access aspirational Post-16 opportunities and to lead a life that includes positive relationships, resilience and financial independence.
Our ambition for all students, including those most able, PP and those with SEND, is that they are fluent in the core knowledge for all of their subjects. For those students with SEND this may require additional scaffolding and strategies that are shared with staff through 'pen profiles'.
What is the structural intent of the subject curriculum, & how is it sequenced so that students know and remember more?
The curriculum across all subjects is carefully sequenced so that prior core declarative and procedural knowledge is built upon, with continual opportunities for core knowledge to be interleaved throughout both key stages so that students know more, remember more and can apply that knowledge in a range of contexts. Facilitating knowledge adds important local, national, and global context to core knowledge, and our curriculum intends to provide a richness and diversity that enables our students to experience learning in real life contexts.
How do any school values and focuses influence or feed through the curriculum?
The school curriculum is built on 4 values to ensure our students receive and are able to access it fully, those being:
● Reading and comprehension that aims to ensure all students leave with a reading age at least equivalent to their chronological age
● Our school ethos of Be Kind, Work Hard, Be the Best Version of Yourself
● A deepening understanding of core and facilitating knowledge that enables students to know and remember more
● A wide appreciation of the world that we live in, and the celebration of the diversity this brings
What is our intent to assess how well students access the curriculum and how the school intends to adapt the curriculum to close gaps in knowledge?
To ensure any gaps in prior or new knowledge are quickly identified, we check progress frequently through a range of assessment opportunities, from lesson-by-lesson declarative knowledge tests, end of topic tests that assess knowledge retention and application, to more cumulative common assessments that assess students’ ability to remember and apply knowledge in a range of contexts. The information from these assessments are used to adapt the curriculums intending to quickly close gaps in knowledge and keep students on track to achieve their very best.
What curriculum do we intend students to access at each key stage, that ‘at least’ meets the requirements of the national curriculum, and what is your ambition for students’ by the end of each Key Stage?
At KS3 students access all subjects within the ‘basic’ curriculum and our school curriculum meets and often extends National Curriculum requirements, lasting for 3 years to ensure breadth and depth. We are ambitious in what we expect students to achieve during this key stage and aspire for all our students to make strong progress from their entry points to the school that enable them to confidently access level 2 courses at KS4.
At KS4, we intend that all students continue to follow a broad ‘basic’ curriculum over 2 years building on the breadth of experience at KS3. All students have the option of studying the suite of EBacc subjects and our intention is that we annually increase our numbers of students achieving EBacc in order to contribute to our own and the governmental ambition for EBAcc study. Students and their parents / carers receive careful guidance to help them select focus subjects in addition to the basic curriculum, to ensure the highest education pathways post GCSE studies.
How does the co-curriculum enhance the curriculum?
The main school curriculum is enhanced by extensive co-curricular opportunities in areas of sports, the Arts, catch-up sessions, wellbeing, visits to places of interest and visitors coming into our school.
Implementation
In order to fulfil these ideals, our five-year through-curriculum model requires pupils to engage with a wide range of subjects in Year 7 to 9 and then provides a more bespoke approach through our “options routes” in Years 10 and 11. You can read more about how the curriculum is organised in each school year below. For a more detailed overview of the topics taught in each discipline, please see the individual subject pages.
Key Stage 3 (Years 7 - 9)
The Year 7 and 8 curriculum serves a clear purpose in every subject at Bridgemary. Curriculum teams plan their schemes of work to ensure they deliver the content of the national Programme of Study, and that high challenge and enjoyment are at the heart of learning. It is important to us that the Year 7, 8 and 9 curriculum is much more than a means of preparing pupils for Years 10 and 11. Curriculum mapping has taken place in every department to ensure that the skills required for assessment in Year 11 are developed from the start of a pupil’s journey in Year 7 and that learning from primary school is built upon and not repeated.
Alongside mathematics, English, sciences, religious studies and physical education, Year 7 students study a broad range of non-core subjects from day one. Art, performing arts, digital technology, food technology, technology and STEAM lessons ensure their curricula give pupils an experience of both the academic and vocational aspects of their subjects. We have recently increased the curriculum time in Spanish in Years 7 to 9.
Class groups are organised into one or two bands, depending upon the size of the year group, with 3 or 4 sets in each ‘band’. These sets are organised in ability to help teachers plan for more ‘stretch’ and ‘challenge’ with in lessons. Pupils access the full spectrum of subjects in Years 7 to 9 with mixed-ability groupings in the arts and technology subjects, and sets in maths, English, science.
Beyond the classroom, we aim to open the door to a wide range of experiences. All subjects provide additional learning contexts including annual school productions and high-performing sports teams in the majority of disciplines. You can find more information on these on the subject pages.
We are very proud to have held Artsmark Gold for four consecutive applications, we are now aspiring to Platinum status through our integration of the Arts into STEM. We have been pioneering STEAM projects since 2015. Our STEAM curriculum interweaves different subjects, introducing learners to new ways of thinking and enabling them to apply their knowledge, skills and understanding through a holistic approach.
Adding a focus on creative skills to the sciences boosts engagement, encourages pupils’ problem-solving and encourages them to think about abstract concepts in real-world contexts. We also know that the arts encourage skills such as creativity, communication, independence, resilience, initiative and collaboration, and that these skills are fundamental for students to succeed in an increasingly complex, fast-paced and technologically advanced world.
Since 2018, Year 7s have had 3 discrete STEAM lesson taught per fortnight. In Year 8 and 9, pupils access a STEAM project as part of their Curriculum. All students in KS3 and 4 have access to STEAM through our ASPIRE STEAM Fair where pupils see STEAM in action and learn of the vast array of courses available to students at Higher Education to the enterprise and employment in the South Coast from the Royal Navy, BAE, Sea Cadets, Cruising Industry, IBM to name a few.
Key Stage 4 (Years 10 & 11)
Four option subjects are chosen during Year 9, ready for students to begin at the start of Year 10. This allows pupils nearly two years of study on their chosen examined courses.
Through the options process, we meet the statutory national requirements and aim to provide a bespoke curriculum. For us, this means giving our pupils as much choice and flexibility as possible, whilst ensuring they follow examination courses that lead to positive outcomes and give them access to Post-16 opportunities at the correct level. A range of both GCSE and high value Vocational Qualifications are available for students to choose from. We allow the same amount of curriculum time to Vocational Qualifications as GCSE courses. Please see the Options page for more information on the qualifications we offer on each route.
We provide a wide range of Cultural Capital opportunities for our students, 54% of which are from a disadvantaged background. These opportunities encourage students to look towards further and higher education with close links to our local colleges and universities but also feature a trip to Oxford University. Trips to theatres and professional level sports fixtures further enrich the curriculum and allow student to draw upon real life experiences when answering more challenging questions in their terminal exams.
For any further information regarding our Curriculum please contact Mr Brooks at james.brooks@bridgemary-tkat.org