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Curriculum

Curriculum Overview

We are ambitious for our students and our curriculum is designed to provide all students with an education that is:

• Broad: Providing experiences, a wide range of subjects in a variety of settings, using a range of teaching and learning styles
• Balanced: Devoting appropriate time to each subject, allowing students a degree of control over their own education
• Relevant: Building experiences, enabling students to make sense of the world, developing confidence and independence
• Personalised: Ensuring each student is provided with all the experiences, challenges and support to reach their potential

Our students develop the knowledge, skills, and cultural capital that enable them to move successfully into training, apprenticeships, employment and higher education.  Our aim is that students leave Haileybury Turnford as successful, confident and considerate young adults.

KS4 Options for students currently in Year 8

The school has been reviewing its curriculum during 2019-20.

As part of this review, we have considered the length of Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 and when students choose their Options to study to the end of Year 11.

At present, Year 8 students choose their Key Stage 4 Options in the Spring Term each year. The guiding principles of our curriculum are to ensure that we provide a broad and balanced, yet ambitious curriculum for all students, which provides opportunities for them to achieve their full potential, alongside developing their character and ensuring their physical, and emotional wellbeing.

The decision has been made to move to a three-year Key Stage 3 and a two-year Key Stage 4. This curriculum intent has been approved by the governing body. This means that children currently in Year 8 will not be making their Options Choices this academic year, but will instead continue with the full Key Stage 3 curriculum until the end of Year 9.

The Key Stage 4 Options Process will therefore take place in March 2021.  Now is the right time for this curriculum change for the following reasons.

1. A three-year KS3 ensures all students have access to a broad and balanced curriculum where they can deepen their knowledge and skills across a wide range of subjects, complemented by programmes for development of character, cultural capital and their physical and emotional wellbeing.

2. Our current curriculum provision has meant a reduction in the number and range of subjects that students are exposed to and they are forced to make choices early, when they do not always have the maturity or knowledge of what such restrictions may mean for later study.

3. We see Key Stage 3 as the building block for students to develop the foundations of their knowledge, skills and understanding and to prepare them for the rigours of Key Stage 4. By having a three-year Key Stage 3, students have the time to embed and practice skills, develop a broader cultural knowledge and vocabulary and be best prepared for informed decision making. Students will gain exposure to a knowledge rich curriculum which is coherently and sequentially planned and which supports memory and cognition retrieval in preparation for Key Stage 4.

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