Overview
The school’s key curriculum intention is to ensure that all students have a broad and balanced curriculum which enables them to access the next stage of their lives and to live a full and meaningful life as global citizens. We recognise and cater for a full range of abilities and seek to challenge students’ self-imposed barriers through offering a rich and challenging curriculum.
This focuses around three areas:
Accelerated Progress
We are ambitious for our students whatever their starting points and circumstances and refuse to accept that a student’s starting point defines what they can and will achieve. Our intention is to accelerate progress for all students. We do, however, recognise that some students will require additional time and support and that a ‘one size fits all’ curriculum fails students.
Our curriculum gives students the opportunity to achieve the English Baccalaureate but recognises this is not appropriate for many of our students.
Ready for next stage
The intention of this strand is to ensure that all students have the requisite skills, knowledge and character to access the next part of the curriculum or the wider world. It includes ensuring that students develop fundamental British values, that students have high quality ‘Sex and Relationships’ Education and that they develop their character and resilience. At Hartsdown this Character Education is addressed through STRIVE, which is threaded through all areas of the school.
STRIVE – Climbing the mountain to an amazing life
Strive (verb): to make great efforts to achieve something, to struggle or fight vigorously:
- Scholarship - We value high attainment and aim for mastery for all students
- Teamwork - We are one community, one team working to the same end
- Resilience - Whatever it takes, we don’t give up
- Integrity - We show character: respect, honesty, kindness
- Vision - Seeing ourselves as part of something bigger; a belief that our life has meaning and value. Asking the question where am I heading and what difference do I want to make
- Excellence - We aim for excellence in everything we do. No excuses!
Literacy and Oracy
Hartsdown seeks to ensure that all students leave us with an extended vocabulary and a high degree of literacy and numeracy. This is to ensure that they have a voice and are able to thrive throughout their lives. For some students this will include teaching decoding and for some EAL students this will involve support in acquiring English. For others this will entail challenging and supporting them to master the highest levels of English and Mathematics so that they can achieve top grades in both GCSE and 6th form.
In Key Stage 3 students follow the middle years programme. This is a challenging and ambitious framework that encourages students to make links between curriculum areas. It connects to our ambitions of ensuring students become 'lifelong learners' and supports students in becoming curious ‘world citizens’. The curriculum covers the National Curriculum and prioritises:
- Development of skills and knowledge
- Breadth of curriculum
- The ability to use skills and knowledge across different domains e.g. Maths skill in Geography
We have developed this curriculum with the support of an outstanding primary schools to ensure that all students are challenged and don’t waste time repeating primary content. In addition work is moderated in conjunction with KS2 teachers and leaders to ensure that teachers have high expectations of their pupils, more accurate understanding of prior learning and the ability to apply pedagogical techniques used successfully in KS2 to improve engagement and learning in KS3.
The purpose of this curriculum is to ensure that students in the Sixth Form develop as lifelong learners and world ready-citizens, so that at the end of Sixth Form they have the skills and qualifications required to be able to choose their own futures and be successful in them. As such, students undertake the International Baccalaureate Career-Related Programme (IBCP).
The IBCP has a component framework, with students studying two academic IB Diplomas and a Level 3 vocational course. IBCP students also study the IBCP core, a combination of four component modules that develops them as both learners and global citizens. These four components are as follows:
- Language Development is the development of communication skills and cultural awareness through the study of an unknown language
- Personal and Professional Skills is the study of skills that students will need to be successful in professional contexts, as well as focussing on resilience and self-confidence.
- Service Learning is the application of service within their local community.
- Reflective Project is a 3000-word essay that requires academic research and critique based on an ethical dilemma related to their vocational option, learning and putting into practise key skills that will help to prepare them for the rigours of university.
We believe that the IBCP curriculum allows students a broader range of destinations post-18, with pathways leading to university, apprenticeship or further study. We adapt the framework based on the needs of our cohort, increasing the size of the vocational qualification where this will help students into apprenticeship or employment destinations and offering Higher Level IB Diploma subjects where this will assist students in applying to and accessing top universities and competitive courses.
As a school, teachers and students benefit from the close relationship we have with the other schools in the Coastal Academy Trust that also run the IBCP, allowing for moderation of work, sharing of best practice and ongoing development of the curriculum. This is in addition to the ongoing support and training we receive for the IB.
