Curriculum at St Luke’s
Intent, Implementation & Impact
Our curriculum intent
St Luke’s intent is to deliver a knowledge-rich and broad five year curriculum that is cohesive, cumulative and highly sequenced. It is ambitious and challenging; yet supportive and personalised, designed with embedding knowledge acquisition and long term memory in mind. Students’ knowledge, understanding and skills and their ability to apply them in a practical and/or exams based context are cemented by frequent and systematic interleaving of topics, regular low stake assessments and purposeful feedback for progress. We believe our curriculum will engage and inspire our students; help them discover their aspirations and own unique talents; and develop and hone their aptitude for truly independent learning so that they are fully prepared for the world of work and their post-16 education.
The intent behind our curriculum is for it to facilitate our students’ growth, so that they have high aspirations and flourish in their ambitions so that they can live life to the full, encouraging their curiosity, building a love of learning and deepening their critical thinking ability. Our curriculum develops resilience in our learners by equipping them with the knowledge, skills and understanding to be independent and responsible members of society who have improved life chances and make positive contributions to their community. Our curriculum is viewed as a progressive five year learning journey with a strong focus on the key concepts within subject disciplines so that we build on our learners’ experiences at primary school and their individual needs so we can ensure equity and equality of opportunity so that they can all enjoy a successful transition to post-16. On a moral level, it is a curriculum that reflects our societal values of personal development, spirituality, economic well-being, healthy lifestyle, inclusivity and democracy so that our students can live successful and happy lives in a culturally diverse modern world, feeling confident that they have grown intellectually, morally, spiritually, aesthetically, creatively, emotionally and physically because of their time at St Luke’s.
The key principles underpinning our curriculum are derived from Dylan William’s speech on “Principled Curriculum Design, October 2013.
Our curriculum is:
- Balanced – all subjects taught are equally valuable and valued.
- Rigorous – it allows students to study subjects in depth, so that they develop subject habits of mind and a resilient and independent approach to learning.
- Coherent – we make connections within and between subjects and the combination of students’ experiences mutually complement each other and reinforce learning.
- Vertically integrated – so that progression is seen across the five years, taking what students already know and building on that knowledge so that it feeds into what needs to be learned later.
- Appropriate – it has the right balance of aspiration and challenge with support and personalisation to ensure that each individual need is met.
- Focused – the five year learning journey focuses on the big ideas. What do we leave out?
- Relevant – to the situational and contextual interest patterns of our students; our curriculum will get students interested in things they didn’t know they were interested in.
The implementation of our curriculum
Our curriculum is designed so that it maximises the likelihood that our learners will remember and connect the steps they’ve been taught by following a progression model that builds on prior learning, ensuring comprehension of substantive and disciplinary knowledge with regular opportunities for interleaving and deliberate retrieval practice to ensure that knowledge is profoundly retained and not merely encountered.
Our department teams of reflective and specialist practitioners work collaboratively to plan and deliver schemes of learning that construct a clear and coherent subject specific curriculum over the five years that enables students to make links within and across topics. Our schemes of learning intuitively build our students’ knowledge, skills and understanding over time, incorporating regular, personalised and formative assessment of their learning so that we are fully confident that progress is being made and knowledge and skills are firmly embedded in our students’ long term memories.
Our school year is divided into three knowledge cycles of approximately twelve weeks. Each cycle comprises ten teaching weeks, during which students cover new topics in preparation for examination at the end of Year 11, followed by an assessment week when all students in Years 7-11 in all subjects complete exam based tests/other assessments to analyse their strengths and weaknesses in current and previous knowledge cycles. This is followed by Super Teaching week in which teachers re-teach areas that students have struggled with in the assessments/exam based tests.
Our broad, rich and balanced curriculum incorporates English Language, English Literature, Maths, Science, French and Spanish, History, Geography, Life to the Full, Music, Computing, PE, Art and Design, Drama, Food Nutrition and Design & Technology in KS3. At KS4 our core curriculum includes English Language, English Literature, Maths, Combined Science, History or Geography, French or Spanish, PE and Life to the Full.
Our option courses are a mixture of GCSE and vocational specifications to guarantee a personalised curriculum and therefore maximise student achievements. Students can choose from: French, Spanish, Music, History, Geography, Separate Sciences, Art & Design, 3 Design, Food Nutrition, Performing Arts – Dance, Performing Arts – Drama, GCSE PE, Sports Studies, Computer Science, Creative I Media, Photography, Health & Social Care.
We deliver our Religious Education, Relationships & Sex Education, PSHE and SMSC curriculums in our Life to the Full lessons, which is a five year programme of learning that all students participate in.
The intent of our ‘Life to the Full’ Curriculum at St Luke’s is to help each student to experience life in all its fullness. This includes their social, physical, spiritual, relational and academic development and means that all students:
- Have the opportunity to experience a balanced and varied curriculum allowing students to study a wide variety of topics related to all aspects of their development as human beings.
- Develop their understanding of how these topics relate to our five values of hope, respect, inclusivity, responsibility and achieving your best.
- Have the opportunity to explore a range of faiths thus developing their understanding of others beliefs and developing their own world view.
- Make positive informed choices around their health, well-being and diet thus taking responsibility for their own physical and mental health.
- Link the benefits of a healthy diet, physical activity, self-esteem and healthy relationships to mental and physical well-being.
- Develop their ability to debate and discuss difficult topics demonstrating their respect and tolerance of all views.
- Understand how British Values impact on their lives and the role of democracy in the modern world.
- Understand how to stay safe in this modern world and minimise risk.
- Contribute to the school community in a positive way and demonstrate their ability and commitment to social change within the wider world.
For a detailed overview of our curriculum across the five years, in terms of subject breakdown, please view the next tab.
At St Luke’s our curriculum is delivered both in and outside of the classroom, with students being able to access a varied and exciting enrichment calendar. We believe the impact of enrichment is substantial on a young person’s development; it:
- Helps students to inspire each other to achieve their best and experience great things;
- Builds their confidence so they are individually resilient and collectively interdependent;
- Creates a strong sense of self-worth and respect for the world around them;
- Encourages students to enjoy life and want to explore it by experiencing new things; and,
- Enables students to take responsibility in a wide range of arenas as leaders, volunteers and courageous advocates.
By the time our students’ leave St Luke’s in year 11, we would like them all to have:
- Represented the school;
- Visited an art gallery, museum, seen a show at a theatre and an event at a world class sporting venue;
- Become politically engaged with a visit to the houses of parliament and have met a politician;
- Presented or performed to an audience of peers such as in an assembly or Drama production;
- Engaged in a wide variety of sporting and leisure activities including having completed an adventurous hike and engaged with the local surroundings;
- Completed meaningful work experience with a local employer;
- Volunteered for a charity – giving time, raising awareness or fundraising;
- Worked with a local bank and become aware of financial products and money issues;
- Communicated with students in another school in a different part of the world and found shared ideas about their school life; and,
- Read widely to broaden their knowledge of literature and the world, to include a broadsheet newspaper, a journal/piece of academic literature, a Shakespeare text and a novel.
The impact of our curriculum
To ensure that our curriculum is having the impact we intend it to; in that our students have developed the detailed knowledge and understanding they need across the curriculum to enable them to secure excellent outcomes; and that they are ready to take the next step in achieving their aspirations and ambitions by moving onto post-16, we will continually monitor, review, evaluate and amend our curriculum, looking at a range of quantitative and qualitative data collected from (though this is not an exhaustive list): learning walks, student voice, data analysis, leadership meetings, attendance, behaviour for learning and destinations data, and (most importantly) the quality of work produced by students that evidences progression and retention of knowledge. This process of monitor, review, evaluate and amend will be conducted at a whole school level, but also at classroom level through our assessment cycles (see Assessment section above), with teachers conducting regular assessments, both formative and summative, that will check students’ understanding and learning to inform future planning, address any misconceptions and fill in any gaps to ensure that knowledge has been embedded and that students are ready to move on to the next stage.
Curriculum overview 2020-2021
|
|
7S/L |
7FT |
8S/L |
8FT |
9S/L |
9FT |
10X |
10Y |
11X |
11Y |
|
English |
16% |
24% |
16% |
24% |
16% |
20% |
18% |
18% |
20% |
20% |
|
Maths |
16% |
20% |
16% |
20% |
16% |
18% |
16% |
16% |
16% |
16% |
|
Science |
12% |
12% |
12% |
12% |
16% |
16% |
|
|
|
|
|
Combined Science |
|
|
|
|
|
|
18% |
18% |
20% |
20% |
|
Geography |
6% |
4% |
8% |
4% |
8% |
6% |
|
|
|
|
|
History |
8% |
4% |
6% |
4% |
8% |
6% |
|
|
|
|
|
RPE/LttF&Ma |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
8% |
8% |
|
Life to the Full |
6% |
6% |
6% |
6% |
6% |
6% |
4% |
4% |
|
|
|
Languages |
10% |
4% |
10% |
4% |
10% |
8% |
|
|
|
|
|
Core PE |
6% |
6% |
6% |
6% |
6% |
6% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
|
Art |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
2% |
2% |
|
|
|
|
|
Drama |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
2% |
2% |
|
|
|
|
|
Music |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
2% |
2% |
|
|
|
|
|
Computing |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
|
|
|
|
|
Hospitality & Catering |
2% |
2% |
2% |
2% |
2% |
2% |
|
|
|
|
|
Design Technology |
2% |
2% |
2% |
2% |
2% |
2% |
|
|
|
|
|
Option A |
|
|
|
|
|
|
10% |
10% |
8% |
8% |
|
Option B |
|
|
|
|
|
|
10% |
10% |
8% |
8% |
|
Option C |
|
|
|
|
|
|
10% |
10% |
8% |
8% |
|
Option D |
|
|
|
|
|
|
10% |
10% |
8% |
8% |
Our subjects
St Luke’s is a wonderful place.
A school full of staff who are dedicated to improving the life chances of every student that attends the school.
Kealey Sherwood, Headteacher
