Curriculum
Curriculum Intent
Empowering all to make the best choices for a future of fullness and love.
Our Curriculum is knowledge rich and has been designed to ensure each and every child can experience life in all its fullness. Students are empowered to make the best choices for the futures in rapidly evolving local, national and global arenas.
The curriculum is bespoke to the needs of our community at St Andrew’s, not only by focussing on appropriately ambitious subject specific knowledge, skills and understanding, but by development of the core values that will enable each individual to become healthy, confident, ethically informed citizens.
Our teachers are enthusiastic specialists in their subject areas and their focus is firmly on ensuring that all students make progress while transmitting a passion for creative learning. We believe that intelligence is not fixed. Through clear explanations, well-crafted questioning and modelling all individuals will find and embrace their potential, becoming wise and capable lifelong learners.
Our curriculum is planned around 4 aims so that our students become:
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Ambitious, capable learners ready to learn throughout their lives
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Enterprising, creative contributors
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Healthy, confident, ethically informed citizens
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Wise and adaptable individuals
Please find holistic maps for each year group on the links below:
Curriculum Rationale
Our core business is learning, and our motto Nihil Sine Labore (Nothing Without Effort) acknowledges that success is achieved as a result of the hard work and dedication of all who form part of the family of St Andrew’s. We are committed to constantly improving our curriculum and it continues to be reviewed to raise standards of attainment and achievement and make advancements in equity to meet the needs of all young people studying at St Andrew’s.
We believe that all students should be provided with a curriculum that enables them to become:
1. Ambitious, capable learners ready to learn throughout their lives.
We plan a curriculum with sufficient breadth, challenge and ambition for every student to realise their highest aspirations, then work tirelessly to ensure every student is supported to access that curriculum regardless of ability, need or disadvantage.
2. Enterprising, creative contributors
We plan a curriculum that develops a problem-solving, systems-thinking and relentlessly-seeking-to-make-and-improve mindset. Learners are provided with opportunities to make choices and take risks in an atmosphere of trust and safety.
3. Healthy, confident, ethically informed citizens
We plan a curriculum that develops Students’ to critically analyse in order to navigate a media/information-rich society. We also provide students with exposure to and contact with a wider range of employment and education providers to broaden horizons and enrich students’ experience.
4. Wise and adaptable individuals
We strive to ensure that every students’ experience, planned and unplanned (‘taught and caught’ Character Education) develops them as a human being. Resulting in every student being an enlightened, confident, virtuous and resilient member of local and global communities.
The St Andrew’s curriculum provides a five-year journey where Key Stage 3 nurtures students allowing them to experience a broad and balanced curriculum that encompasses all National curriculum subjects as they prepare to make choices to specialise at Key Stage 4. St Andrew’s core subjects of English, maths, science and Religious Education are an integral part of our school’s daily curriculum, providing our students with the skills and knowledge to make confident, wise and informed choices.
St Andrew’s has a three-year Key Stage 3. This has been established in order to secure a deep and rich depth of knowledge and skills and prepare students for an aspirational, challenging Key Stage 4. The Key Stage 3 curriculum allows students to study a fully broad and balanced set of all National Curriculum subjects while using our individual STEM learning lessons to combine taught themes and topics to develop engineering habits of mind. The focus on making ‘things’ that work and making ‘things’ work better though interdisciplinary learning in real life contexts reinforces the development of character. The STEM learning lessons provide a rich learning environment to help increase in-depth learning, challenge and enjoyment as well as the application of skills and knowledge in a variety of familiar and new contexts. Using the habits of mind students will develop the engineering habits of mind; Problem finding, Visualising, Adapting, System thinking, Improving, Creative problem solving.
At Key Stage 4, Students are given the opportunity to choose a personalised pathway of learning which best suits their strengths and interests in order to and will provide them with the best opportunity to succeed academically. All students study 4 additional Option choices to complement the core curriculum at St Andrew’s. In order to ensure that students are studying a balanced and varied curriculum, students are guided to select at least one option from the following: history, geography, Spanish, German or computer science. Whilst many schools offer a curriculum whereby nearly all students study what is known as the 'EBacc', where students must study at least 1 language and a humanity, we believe this is a choice for the individual whilst being supported by all staff at St Andrew’s.
Curriculum model
Current 2023-2024: St Andrew's operates a 2-week timetable consisting of 50x 1 hour lessons
