Curriculum document for 2024.25 - CLICK HERE
Aim For Excellence
At the George Eliot Academy we are committed to providing a curriculum for the pupils that creates a love of learning, empowers all pupils and enriches their lives and cultural capital. We Aim for Excellence and have high expectations of all our pupils. Our STAR values underpin all the work we do in school.
Self-Discipline - Supporting our pupils to learn how to control and manage themselves. Pupils who conduct themselves as ‘good citizens’ and are able to articulate and regulate their feelings.
Tenacity - Encouraging our pupils to be resilient and determined. To be persistent to succeed and never give up.
Ambition - Promoting pupils to set goals and have high aspirations for themselves so that they make excellent achievements in all they do.
Responsibility - Fostering an environment where we behave responsibly, we show care, respect and kindness to all.
Powerful Knowledge
Every child is special and capable of extraordinary things. Their limitless potential flourishes in a culture of hard work and kindness. We challenge them to do what they think they can’t, to persist, to work hard and to be at their best. (ULW)
From September 2023 we have adopted the United Learning curriculum. Our curriculum is ambitious and designed to give all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged, and those with SEND the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. It follows the National Curriculum, and is coherently planned and sequenced. Our pupils study a full range of subjects for as long as possible, ‘specialising’ only at the start of Year 10.
Our curriculum is designed to provide children with the core knowledge they need for success in education and later life, to maximise their cognitive development, to develop the whole person and the talents of the individual and to allow all children to become active and economically self-sufficient citizens.
Our curriculum is based on these key principles:
Entitlement: All pupils have the right to learn what is in the curriculum
Coherence: Taking the national curriculum as our starting point, the curriculum is sequenced so that powerful knowledge builds term by term and year by year. Connections are made with and between subjects.
Mastery: We ensure that foundation knowledge, skills and concepts are secure before moving on. Pupils regularly revisit prior learning and apply their understanding in new contexts.
Adaptability: The core content- the ‘what’-of the curriculum is stable, and teachers will adapt lessons – the ‘how’- to meet the needs of their own classes.
Representation: All pupils see themselves in the curriculum.
Education with character: Our curriculum is wider than the taught academic subjects. We support pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and our co-curricular provision and department focus on building cultural capital sees pupils accessing more experiences outside of the classroom.
Reading and Literacy is in everything we do
The school works hard to promote a love of reading. Our form time has form tutors reading aloud to our pupils. Staff have had CPD around the importance of reading and fluency .
Our English department supports peer reading, classics club, debating and public speaking competitions as well as external competitions like the Carnegie award and festival of arts.
The school continues to build on the work we did last year for Oracy. Family discussion and form time discussions continue to be a regular feature of our wider curriculum.
Our PSHCE and Careers curriculum, which includes RSE, has a planned curriculum for every year group. Parents are consulted and supported. A strength of our school is the links we have with external visitors and our local community. Every year group has a plethora of experiences that support our curriculum. The school is in the process of working for the SMSC award
Quality Assurance
The George Eliot Academy has systematic and well-developed procedures to ensure quality assurance of curriculum delivery. The senior leadership team and all Directors of Learning are actively involved in the monitoring and evaluation of the quality of teaching and learning (MEQTL) through:
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Culture walks
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Work Scrutinies
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Pupil Voice
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Parent voice
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Staff voice
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Curriculum reviews
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External Deep Dives and School Improvement work
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Learning Conversations and LASER meetings
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Staff working as exam markers for the exam boards
To find out more about the curriculum in school, please email Dee.Stanton@GeorgeEliotAcademy.org.uk
