Our curriculum is academic, rigorous and challenging: tier two vocabulary and complex concepts are taught from year seven.

Our learning model and sequenced learning are underpinned by the cognitive science work of Daniel T. Willingham. Designed with long-term memory in mind, our curriculum ensures that students’ knowledge, skills and understanding are cemented by frequent and systematic revisiting.

Our curriculum is based on the understanding that students arrive with significant prior knowledge, a foundation that we build upon from day one.

We believe that assessment is an intrinsic part of successful curriculum planning and effective teaching and learning. We use frequent, efficient assessment both to empower students to become highly effective, independent and resilient learners and to reduce teacher workload. We use data and assessment systematically to inform planning to ensure rapid and sustained progress for every student. Through regular retrieval practice, spaced learning and interleaving, we embed knowledge into the long-term memory.

We believe that our high-quality curriculum ensures that our students learn both declarative (what and why) and procedural (how) knowledge. Declarative knowledge includes the substantive knowledge required to connect prior learning with new, as well as the contextual disciplinary knowledge which leads to their ability to connect learning between subject domains.

We provide a curriculum which is rich and varied, allowing students to specialise in their foundation subjects, fostering that passion early, whilst providing additional time for Geography and History, subjects pivotal to learning about our place in the world around us.