Curriculum Overview

Intent, Implementation and Impact

Our Curriculum Vision

All pupils have access to a curriculum that develops the powerful knowledge and skills to which they are all entitled in order to lead successful lives and make a positive contribution to their communities.

Where every pupil matters, every pupil can succeed.

Our purpose is to maximise pupils’:

• achievement
• aspiration
• excitement and enjoyment through positive challenge

Curriculum Intent

• To equip our pupils with the knowledge and skills needed for their future to achieve their full potential
• To deliver a broad and balanced curriculum reflecting the needs of our pupils
• To raise aspiration, promote resilience and create successful learners
• To promote spiritual, moral, social, cultural and community development

Our Curriculum vision aims to reflect Malet Lambert’s values and ethos:

Traditional Values, Contemporary Aspirations, Creative Curiosity

Traditional Values

This reflects our core purpose to ensure all pupils are catered for with a plethora of skills which inspire, nurture and are embedded throughout their time in each subject.

Contemporary Aspirations

Pupils are supported throughout the curriculum to develop skills and knowledge needed to obtain their deserved futures.

Creative Curiosity

Each subject at Malet Lambert is designed to sequence lessons that provide a relentless, inquisitive nature in our pupils.

 

Our curriculum is founded and aligns with our Trust’s guiding principles:

Ambition	Our pupils, irrespective of their starting points and backgrounds, have a right to the same knowledge and experiences.  Every child will have doors to their future opened by ensuring that they are prepared for the next stage of their lives with appropriate knowledge, skills and experiences.
Balance	Our pupils receive a curriculum that places equal importance on knowledge, intellect and creativity alongside moral, spiritual, emotional and physical development.
Coherence	Curricula is designed with a clear and logical sequencing to secure knowledge at each stage.  Subjects are true to their discipline whilst forging powerful links between other subjects, as well as to pupils’ own life experiences.

Curriculum Intent

All pupils have access to our curriculum that develops the knowledge and skills in order to lead successful lives and make a positive contribution to their communities. We deliver a curriculum that has at its heart the intention to support pupils to be the best they can possibly be by removing barriers and ensuring social justice. We deliver a balanced curriculum that places equal importance on every aspect of a child’s education, ensuring the development of key qualities including PSHE, CEIAG and Employability to support future learning and employment.

We have developed and constructed an ambitious curriculum for all pupils regardless of their background. End-points and starting points have been clearly defined and are appropriate, providing a map through each subject for all year groups and key stages. Our curricula are sequenced using evidence-based research on how pupils learn and how to transfer key knowledge to their long-term memory. In order to achieve this, we have developed a set of curriculum principles to drive our work with this.

Curriculum Implementation

We have considered the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are required to achieve academic excellence in each subject at A Level and beyond. This ensures that pupils in each phase receive a rigorous, coherent and intelligently sequenced curriculum, which builds on what has come before. The curriculum is grounded in the strongest available evidence about how pupils learn and retain knowledge in the long term.

At Malet Lambert, all staff think about curriculum at three levels. The first is the intended curriculum:  what we intend pupils to learn. Subject specialists set out this detail meticulously, drawing on their academic knowledge, the national curriculum and experience of what is necessary to flourish in their discipline. The second level is the implemented curriculum; the resources teachers use to deliver the curriculum. Finally, we emphasise the importance of the enacted curriculum, where our skilled teachers bring all of this knowledge to life in a way that will be meaningful and exciting for the pupils that they know so well.

Subject teachers have a good knowledge of their subject areas and expertise. Where staff are teaching outside of their main subject of expertise, there is training, leadership and support in place. Each subject has developed a long-term map that clearly lays out the curriculum across the relevant key stages, so that the knowledge pupils are expected to acquire each academic year is made explicit. This knowledge should build cumulatively in terms of its breadth and depth. Subject teams identify concepts that are central to the mastery of each subject and they maintain an unrelenting focus on helping pupils to learn this knowledge.

Continuous Professional Development, specifically SPD (fortnightly subject, planning and development sessions), maintains an unrelenting focus on improving and evolving the curriculum. Evidence-based and relevant CPD is delivered to support the design and implementation of the curriculum at both whole-school and subject-specific level.

Our curriculum is inclusive, broad, balanced and will never narrow the entitlement to knowledge especially for our most vulnerable pupils. We provide a relevant curriculum that enables pupils to make informed choices about their next steps in education, employment or training.

A specific focus on disciplinary literacy is given for all our pupils in both the spoken and written language of each subject to better develop and close gaps in pupils’ cultural capital. Assessment in subjects are meaningful and driven by the curriculum to sustain good outcomes for all of our pupils.

Regular retrieval practice and spaced practice should be built into the curriculum to help pupils form durable long-term memories. Sequencing of curriculum, interleaving and metacognition is also used to support pupils with building key knowledge for long term memory.

A rigorous approach is undertaken to literacy, numeracy and reading, therefore early and coordinating intervention can occur. Feedback to pupils is meaningful, motivating and linked to the delivery of the curriculum and designated end points appropriate to age and experiences as well as being manageable for staff.

Reviews take place regularly to ensure relevance and coherence of the curriculum is in line with the designated Trust and school priorities. Where appropriate, strategies are in place (e.g. check lists) that support pupils in self-regulating their learning of the curriculum.

Homework is planned into the curriculum and consistently applied across teams. It provides pupils with the opportunity to practise, embed, extend upon or apply the knowledge that they have been taught in lessons, or provide the opportunity to improve a piece of work. Pupils develop knowledge and skills across the curriculum and achieve great GCSE outcomes.

Pupils are ready for the next stage of their education, employment or training. They have the relevant qualifications and skills to be able to access their desired destination that is ambitious. Therefore, there are very few NEETS.

Please explore our curriculum pages to find out more.

Download the Curriculum Overview 2019/20