The curriculum at Mercia Northridge School is broad and balanced, and empowers pupils to leave school with academic qualifications that will open doors. Our curriculum and the qualifications it leads to are passports to a world of further education, higher education, meaningful employment and active citizenship.
Our curriculum invites pupils to understand the world around them, themselves, and the interplay and relationship between the two.
The curriculum is ambitious and rigorous from the start of Year 7. We prioritise the reading of age-and-stage appropriate, challenging academic texts and deliver a curriculum with these at its heart. To ensure access, core vocabulary is identified, explicitly taught, and regularly revisited. Once pupils have been equipped to read for meaning and have done so to master the core curriculum content, they then demonstrate their knowledge, skill and understanding through regular opportunities to write independently and at length, and to discuss concepts in the classroom. All of these skills reading, speaking, listening and writing are appropriately scaffolded and modelled by staff.
Knowledge-rich
In all subject areas, the core, foundational knowledge essential for success in the subject is carefully selected and pupils benefit from explicit teaching of it, and repeated exposures.
Academically ambitious
We do not see the National Curriculum or exam board specifications as limiting, and afford pupils the chances to be curious and exploratory in their learning.
Well sequenced and memory-focused
Threshold concepts and foundational knowledge are identified. Retrieval, spaced practice and interleaving are deliberately and thoughtfully utilised to ensure mastery and fluency of these concepts and that knowledge.
Curriculum implementation
We implement the curriculum through direct instruction: learning that is led by the teacher, using booklets and a high level of structure. We believe this is the best way to impart knowledge and achieve the best outcomes for our pupils.
In Key Stage 3, pupils are taught in mixed ability classes predominantly, with some streaming in mathematics and science.
Pupils with reading ages significantly below their chronological age receive reading interventions in Oasis. Our primary partner is ‘Thinking Reading’ and we are exceptionally proud of the progress made by our graduates from this program over the years. We also deliver DfE-accredited systematic synthetic phonics when appropriate.
In Key Stage 4, pupils study the core curriculum of English, maths, science and digital information technology, as well as taking part in core PE lessons. They take three further options subjects from a range of GCSE and vocational courses on offer. In Year 11, pupils participate in period six lessons on Monday to Thursday, allowing for focused revision and consolidation practice to take place.
Impact and assessment
At Mercia Northridge School, we believe that effective teaching is responsive teaching and as such, we aim to complete activities in lesson time which allow teachers to make accurate and useful inferences about what has been learned, and by whom. Teachers readily identify gaps in knowledge and act to close them swiftly.
While formative assessment drives learning in real time, summative assessment also plays an important role in our approach. Summative assessments take place three times during the academic year. They are cumulative in their nature they test pupils on all that has been learned to date in that subject. As a result, pupils are expected to retain information from one term to the next, one year to the next, one key stage to the next. It is this expectation and the support put in place to facilitate it that delivers long term learning.
The assessments are marked, moderated and standardised by teachers in subject areas. One purpose is to ensure that pupils are always accurately informed as to their own learning, allowing them to self-regulate their learning and prioritise the right things. But importantly, teaching staff and curriculum teams will use assessment data to plan responsively and to address any identified gaps in learning.
The aims and objectives of assessment at Mercia Northridge School
- Enable pupils to demonstrate what they know, understand, and can do in their learning
- Help pupils understand their next steps and how to improve
- Allow teachers to plan for, and resource, teaching that precisely meets the needs of pupils
- Provide regular, clear information for parents and carers to support their child’s progress
- Give school leaders and governors the insight they need to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching and the curriculum
Find out more
If you’d like to find out more about our school’s curriculum, please contact the school office and ask to be directed to Mr Hammonds