Curriculum

Curriculum Overview

Our curriculum is underpinned by our 4Bes: our curriculum is designed to enable our students to be professional; be inclusive; be a learner and be knowledgeable. These values have been carefully chosen to equip our students with the social, academic and cognitive skills required to improve their life chances. By developing these attributes in our students, they will achieve the best qualifications, purpose, self-confidence, self-belief and a readiness to play a positive role within their local and the global community

Curriculum Purpose

Our curriculum is intentionally ambitious and challenging so that our students become knowledge rich. Influenced by contemporary educational research, we deliver a broad and balance academic and student development curriculum. The teaching of knowledge and skills is explicit across all lessons in every department and faculty. To achieve this, all curriculum designers are expected to be outward facing in acknowledging and incorporating subject specific associations and networks who can add in curriculum design, implementation and teachers’ subject knowledge development. To minimise variation across all classrooms, subject leaders lead on ensure the subject knowledge of all teachers is continually improved, checked and supported throughout each academic year.

Curriculum leaders constantly review and improve the curriculum by engaging in regular debate on ‘what’ to teach before considering ‘how ‘to teach it. We acknowledge that the curriculum is evolving and requires continual development to ensure we teach the best that has been thought, said or written. Curriculum leaders set ambitious intent, implementation and impact plans to that our students become knowledgeable professionals equipped with emotional intelligence and the ability to learn and serve others.

Another aspect of our curriculum is the expansion of our English Baccalaureate (EBacc) entry numbers—and by extension those who we aim to achieve standard and good passes in. The 2022 Year 11 cohort had just over 40 per cent entered for the EBacc. This current Year 11 cohort have approximately 50 per cent being entered while the new Year 10 cohort are predicted to having 55 per cent being entered. This strategy of increasing our EBacc entry to the majority of students but not all is both appropriate and suitable. We acknowledge that EBacc supports students with strong foundations for Key Stage 5 and beyond, while also conceding that some students are better placed doing EBacc light (i.e. Humanities but not a language) and a small number of students are better served completed more vocational courses such as ASDAN and having additional support with their core subjects.

Curriculum leaders and teachers are aware of students with diverse needs, including SEND. Our ambition is the same for all students regardless of their starting points or SEND status. Working directly with the SENDCO, each faculty has a teacher who is the designated SEND representative who is responsible for sharing SEND strategies and support where needed.

As part of our curriculum evolving, so it is responsive to our students, we will adjust the timetable for 2023-24. This will not involve an overhaul of what we do but instead some improvements that will optimise what is already there—namely in two areas. Firstly, in order to provide the students with a better sequenced and more comprehensive personal development curriculum, we will have a single period of RSHE a week now for all students from KS3 up until and including KS4—this is as opposed to the two tutor times and half-termly extended tutorial. Secondly, we will remove the KS3 rotation of Music, Drama and IT and ensure each have one period a week as well, so students received a more appropriate entitlement in the arts and computing curriculum.

Student Development Curriculum (SDC):

Our student development curriculum is linked to 8 key strands that align with our 4BEs values. These strands are embedded and interleaved across the school through our subject curriculums, tutorial programme, careers programme and enrichment programme. This ensures all our students can explicitly link their learning to the wider world around them, developing their cultural capital through a wealth of opportunities.  Through the LPS guarantee students are able to access these opportunities in their 7 years at the school to ensure they flourish as Langdon Park students.

Curriculum Implementation

Quality first teaching is at the centre of our curriculum implementation. All staff receive regular engaging and impactful training on how to improve the learning of all our students irrespective of their starting points. This training reinforces our LPS Lesson Expectations.

 

All lessons start with knowledge retrieval. This consists of high challenge low threat questions/tasks which interleave learning from last week, last month and last year to ensure that knowledge is stored in students’ long-term memory. Students are unassisted during the completion of these questions so that key misconceptions are identified and addressed before the lesson continues. We are responsive teachers and thus regularly respond to the misconceptions of our students. Through the use of question and checking for understanding, students self-correct / self-assess their answers using a green pen to highlight misconceptions corrected.

We intend for our students to have a rich vocabulary and thus at the start of every lesson, a word of the day in introduced to equip them to ambitious subject specific vocabulary and to expanding their cultural capital. This provides them with a better understanding of concepts and ideas, facilitating access to knowledge beyond our students’ ordinary daily experiences.

To support our students understanding that knowledge builds upon prior knowledge and sequencing, teachers briefly explain how today’s learning builds upon previous learning and links to future learning. We call this Why Now?

In the knowledge that students require effective teachers to model and demonstrate the implementation of knowledge and skills, all teachers use modelling in every lesson. This can be seen through the use of visualisers, whiteboards, pre-prepared models, oral models and live practical demonstrations. 

LPS teachers are knowledgeable that talk in classrooms is cognitive and thus ensure that students have time to develop their understanding through the use of talk partners. This consists of students having time to process questions, prepare responses with fellow students and share their developed understanding.

Our ambitious curriculum is sequenced effectively so that increase challenge and demand is present as our students progress through the curriculum. We ‘teach to the top’ within every lesson and students are given adequate time to work independently to rehearse and apply their knowledge. All lessons are designed to be demanding of the class and scaffolded down with reasonable adjustments so all students are appropriately stretched and challenged.

To embed a culture of misconceptions being continually addressed, within our Feedback and Assessment policy and our LPS Lesson Expectations, all students engage with success criteria so that they can self and/or peer assess their work. This often occurs after the retrieval questions but can also occur after an independent or collaborative work.

As teachers we appreciate that for learning to be long-term, it must be consolidated. Within and at the end of lessons, teachers review consolidate the learning, share next steps and celebrate progress.

Curriculum Implementation Monitoring

To ensure our curriculum is effectively implemented in every classroom, we implement our quality of education over time policy (QET). QET is a systematic monitoring and development system that is robust, followed through, can withstand external scrutiny and improve student outcomes.

In a commitment to our students, our QET policy is designed to:

• Ensure all teachers and leaders are supported and held accountable for the quality of education provided
• Ensure high standards for the quality of education over time are set, communicated, understood and achieved
• Ensure that senior leaders and curriculum leaders / middle leaders have an accurate view of the quality of education and how they intend to improve it

Our QET policy implementation and impact can be found on our school website under curriculum.

Curriculum Impact

We intend for every student to graduate with the best qualifications, purpose, self-confidence, self-belief and a readiness to play a positive role within their local and the global community.

Through the use of our Lesson Expectations, Feedback and Assessment Policy, QET and SDC we will have a learning culture where our students are: professional characters with a relentless pursuit of high standards and expectations; inclusive of diverse views and perspectives; learners with high aspirations and knowledgeable of the best that has been thought, said or written.

Our students will read widely, supported by our guided reading in the pastoral programme.  Throughout their time at Langdon Park they will be challenged to be ambitious in how they think, speak, read and write.

The impact of our curriculum is measured through several means:

• Outcomes for students at GCSE and A Level
• Progress and attainment data for current year groups
• End of KS3 exam data
• QET evaluations, including curriculum reviews
• Destination data
• Attendance data
• Reading ages
• Behaviour logs
• Engagement in SDC/enrichment activities
• Progress against the Gatsby benchmarks
• Student and parent voice

Timetable 2023-24

As part of our curriculum evolving so it is responsive to our students, we will adjust the timetable for 2023-24. This will not involve an overhaul of what we do but instead some improvements that will optimise what is already there—namely in two areas. Firstly, in order to provide the students with a better sequenced and more comprehensive personal development curriculum, we will have a single period of RSHE a week now for all students from KS3 up until and including KS4—this is as opposed to the two tutor times and half-termly extended tutorial. Secondly, we will remove the KS3 rotation of Music, Drama and IT and ensure each have one period a week as well so students received a more appropriate entitlement in the arts and computing curriculum.

English Baccalaureate

Another aspect of our curriculum is the expansion of our English Baccalaureate (EBacc) entry numbers—and by extension those who we aim to achieve standard and good passes in. The year cohort who just received their GCSE and BTEC grades has just over 40 per cent entered for the EBacc the highest entry to date. We anticipate the entry to increase yearly to 70% in 2024 and over 80% in 2025. We acknowledge that EBacc supports students with strong foundations for Key Stage 5 and beyond, while also adapting the curriculum pathways to support progression for all students.

All students will receive the following at Key Stage 3:

English – 3 periods

Maths – 3 periods

Science – 2 periods

History – 2 periods

Geography – 2 periods

Languages – 2 periods

Computing – 1 period

Drama – 1 period

Music – 1 period

Art & Design – 1 period

PE – 1 period

RSHE (includes RE) – 1 period

 

All students will receive the following at Key Stage 4:

English – 4 periods

Maths – 4 periods

Science – 4 periods

Option A – 2 periods

Option B – 2 periods

Option C – 2 periods

PE – 1 period

RSHE (includes RE) – 1 period

 

If you wish to find out more details about our Curriculum please email admin@langdonpark.org