Curriculum design

Our schools determine the structure of their days, weeks and terms. They determine how long lessons are how the structure of their timetables are written. Trust resources are written for one-hour lessons and we encourage this as a basic lesson length.

Schools determine what subjects they cover at all Key Stages with the local context and needs of their learners in mind. We value academic and applied academic courses equally and believe that each have different, highly-valuable usefulness to our students, dependent upon the routes they want to follow after compulsory schooling ends. We believe it’s essential that learners access the right courses to provide pathways to their future ambitions and we don’t believe that options should be narrowed for any learner, whatever their backgrounds or needs. 

We have agreed with our schools a very small number of curriculum principles that we all align to:

• Teachers should teach their specialisms – it’s what our learners deserve
• The number of separate preps for any teacher should be limited, ideally to 3 – our learners also deserve this because it means that teachers have the time to prep responsively to the needs of their groups and ensure that gaps are being found and closed as part of daily routine practice
• We minimise the number of split classes our timetables tolerate – again, our learners deserve this.

Our schools ensure that their curriculum offer is coherent and provides clear and logical pathways through all key stages and on into level 4 and next steps training, apprenticeships and employment.