• Our curriculum is evidence-based. When students start with us, they embark on a five-year learning journey with a strong focus on the key concepts within subject disciplines. Inspired by the words of Dylan Wiliam our curriculum is:
  • Balanced – All subjects are valued and we do not narrow our curriculum early.
  • Rigorous – Students engage in regular low-stake assessments, homework and purposeful feedback for progress.
  • Coherent – We make connections from past learning to build schema.
  • Vertically integrated – Knowledge and skills are taught cohesively, cumulatively and are carefully sequenced.
  • Appropriate – It is ambitious and challenging, yet supportive and personalised.

Informed by the research of cognitive scientists John Sweller and Daniel Willingham, our curriculum design ensures that content is delivered incrementally, in small steps to prevent overload and maximise learning. Incorporating principles from Ebbinghaus, we recognise the importance of revisiting and regularly reviewing content, embedding retrieval practice into every lesson and learning cycle.

• Our curriculum is built collaborativelyto ensure that the content and delivery is of the highest quality. We review our curriculum regularly in collaboration with the Ted Wragg Trust to ensure our teachers have the subject mastery they need to be the best they can be and that the students have the best experience in our classrooms. Our curriculum is never finished; it is responsive to our community, our region and changes in the national educational landscape. As such, we are always evolving; our teachers are skilled practitioners, committed to the Ted Wragg vision and the Christian ethos of our School. Our approach to CPD, pedagogy and teacher development is rooted in instructional coaching.

• Our curriculum is ambitious and inclusive because we want to engage and inspire all our students. We know that if we want to close the gap between the most privileged and the most disadvantaged, we need to be ambitious and uncompromising. We want our students to 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. Our curriculum facilitates our students’ growth, encourages their curiosity and builds a love of learning. It aims to develop resilience by equipping them with the knowledge, skills and understanding to become independent and responsible members of society and make positive contributions to their community.

As a Ted Wragg school, we have created an ambitious learning culture in the way our curriculum is implemented over time and enacted every day. 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. This ensures 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. Homework supports this learning through regular consolidation and retrieval practice.

Our school year is divided into three knowledge cycles of approximately twelve weeks. Each cycle comprises ten teaching weeks, followed by an assessment week when all students in Years 7-11 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. St Luke’s teachers understand the importance of students responding to feedback.

Our broad, rich and balanced curriculum incorporates English Language, English Literature, Maths, Science, French and Spanish, History, Geography, Life to the Full, RE, Music, Computing, PE, Art and Design, Drama, Food Nutrition and Design & Technology at Key Stage 3. At Key Stage 4, 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. A high percentage of students are entered for the Ebacc and we support all students in securing good literacy and numeracy by systematically assessing how appropriate their pathway is and making changes where needed. Students can choose from: French, Spanish, Music, History, Geography, separate sciences, Art & Design, 3D Design, Hospitality and Catering, Performing Arts – Dance, Performing Arts – Drama, GCSE PE, Sports Studies, Computer Science, Creative iMedia, Photography, and 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.

At St Luke’s, we have a two-week timetable. Below is guide to how many lessons of each subject our students can expect, but we are proud to review this each year and adapt to the needs of our school community and individuals.

*Please see our options booklet on the school website for more details about the wide range of subjects on offer to students from Year 9.

Both exceptional pastoral care and literacy are the heart of what we do. Every day, our students meet with their tutor for 45 minutes and take part in our canon reading programme and mindful moments, ensuring they are building the cultural capital and knowledge of the world they will need to be successful later in life. In addition, students are offered a range of sporting and enrichment activities after school. In the summer term, all St Luke’s students take part in an enrichment week, which includes trips abroad, adventure camps and STEM activities.

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 in each subject, and that they are ready to take the next step by moving onto post-16 education – we will continually monitor, review, evaluate and amend our curriculum, looking at a range of quantitative and qualitative data collected from: 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.