All schools within the Connect Education Trust have developed a curriculum based on the following aims and principles. Whilst all the schools work closely together on curriculum design there are some characteristics which are unique to each school and the communities they serve. 

Curriculum Aims

Our curriculum aims to create remarkable futures for all our pupils by ensuring each child becomes:

• A successful learner who enjoys learning, makes good progress, achieves well and has a clear understanding of how learning happens.
• A confident individual with a body of knowledge which enables them to live a safe, healthy and fulfilling life.
• A responsible, respectful and active citizen who is emphatic and has the strength of character to contribute positively to society.

Each school aims to drive social mobility and improve life chances, especially for the most vulnerable. Strong progress and attainment across the curriculum increases the future choices available to all pupils, empowering them to have remarkable futures.

Curriculum Principles

A quality curriculum considers what knowledge is needed, what is taught, how it is taught and how it is assessed to ensure that pupils have learned it. Through excellent subject leadership, careful discussion and supported planning and professional development, all teachers will know the curriculum in depth. They will secure improved understanding of standards and end points and be able to guard against pupil misconceptions through careful planning and support. Clear planning of the detail of the totality of the curriculum, ensures that pupils have repeated exposure to abstract concepts in different contexts to help build long term memory. 

The curriculum content of each school is underpinned by a research-based understanding of how pupils learn, in particular the frequent retrieval of previously learned content, making connections to previous knowledge and experiences to strengthen pupils understanding and knowledge over time. To achieve this, we build in explicit teaching of curriculum connections across and between subjects, as well as flashbacks or retrieval practice.

We ensure our pupils experience a broad and balanced curriculum and develop a long-term memory of an ambitious body of knowledge. Our coherently planned curriculum uses the National Curriculum as the basis for subject content and expectations. It is planned and sequenced, so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before, towards clearly defined end points. It informs what pupils need to know and be able to do to reach those points. We have structured this through our long term planning documents, criteria for progression of concepts, half-termly curriculum connection maps and session planning.

Our school’s adapt and personalise the curriculum to take into account the local context by addressing typical gaps in pupils’ knowledge and skills, ensuring they are designed to give all pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils and SEND pupils, the cultural capital they need to succeed in life. Each school does this through their carefully selected Curriculum Drivers. These shape every aspect of school life, are embedded in teaching and learning and develop the child as a whole.

Specialist SEND knowledge is used to ensure a carefully constructed curriculum is in place to meet the needs of all pupils. Subject leaders will know their curriculum overview and the finer detail of its component parts, which will contribute to ambitious end goals. Leaders will carefully have considered the pre-requisite learning so that pupils can tackle the new learning to come. 

There is an expectation that leaders ensure that our pupils experience quality resourcing throughout their curriculum.