Curriculum Overview
Aim of the Curriculum
‘Because we are Broadoak’, our curriculum is focused on developing the whole child. Our taught curriculum is deliberately interleaved with opportunities and experiences that bring joy, foster a sense of community and ignite a lifelong love of learning. In particular, our shared, trust-wide curriculum is designed to improve life chances for all our students, especially those who experience disadvantage or may have special education needs. It matters to us that the students at Broadoak understand their power and have a strong sense of self, place and purpose. Our curriculum is designed specifically to provide opportunities for students to develop agency, both by achieving excellent academic outcomes and building a toolkit of soft skills that will support them into their future.
Key Stage Three Curriculum
We share a curriculum which is embedded within the Cabot Learning Federation, providing a high-quality foundation upon which we can build and tailored to meet the needs of our cohort and academy culture. This curriculum is always evolving to meet the demands of a changing world, and we are thrilled that many of our colleagues at Broadoak work across the whole Cabot Learning Federation to develop, design and update this curriculum and ensure it remains of the highest quality and leads to the best learning outcomes in the classroom for young people.
Our promise to our students in Year 7 to 9:
We will…build upon prior knowledge
We will…focus upon the acquisition of key knowledge and skills
We will…support students to seek a broader understanding of their subjects they study
We will… ensure students make links in their learning, both across subjects and across time
We will…follow the National Curriculum plus, offer opportunities for children to study the best of what is known
We will…provide every child with access to a broad curriculum which deepens their understanding of all subject disciplines in order to prepare them for making choices when stepping into Year 10 (KS4, or GCSE study)
The structure of our curriculum:
| Subject | KS3 Curriculum Time per Week – number of lessons per subject (30 x 50 minute periods in total) | ||
| Year 7 | Year 8 | Year 9 | |
| Maths | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| English | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Science | 5 | 4 | 4 |
| Computer Science | n/a | n/a | 1 |
| MFL – French or Spanish | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Humanities | 4 | 5 (taught as separate Geography, History and RE) | 5 (taught as separate Geography, History and RE) |
| Technology | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| The Arts (Art, Music and Drama) | 3 (1 lesson of each discipline) | 3 (1 lesson of each discipline) | 3 (1 lesson of each discipline) |
| Physical Education | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| PSHCE | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Extra Curricular | 1 | 1 | n/a |
Key Stage Four Curriculum
In our 2-year Key Stage 4, option subjects are offered based upon student preferences. Our offer is designed to combine facilitating subjects with carefully chosen non-facilitating subjects, and opportunities for students to develop in specialist areas. Whilst we don’t insist on an EBacc pathway for all students, we recognise the value of the EBacc and are working towards the governments ambition to increase numbers in the EBacc category. One way we are working toward this ambition to focus on improving our uptake in separate sciences (Biology, Physics and Chemistry), languages (French and Spanish), and the performing arts.
For more information about the subjects and qualifications we offer at KS4 see the documents linked below.
| Subject | KS4 Curriculum Time per Week – number of lessons per subject
(30 x 50 minute periods in total) | |
| Year 10 | Year 11 | |
| Maths | 5 | 5 |
| English | 5 | 5 |
| Science | 5 | 5 |
| Option A | 3 | 3 |
| Option B | 3 | 3 |
| Option C | 3 | 3 |
| Option D | 3 | 3 |
| Physical Education | 2 | 2 |
| PSHCE | 1 | 1 |