The curriculum at Bishop Ramsey is intended to provide every student with deep and broad knowledge of all subjects they study so that they may work towards mastery of those subjects. There is the implicit understanding throughout the design of our curriculum that this ‘mastery’ looks different, and will be achieved differently, in each subject specialism.
The curriculum forms a well sequenced narrative that builds both substantive and disciplinary knowledge.
We actively encourage our staff to improve and refine their existing subject ‘content’ knowledge through active engagement with the latest academic thought, publications and research. We also actively encourage our staff to seek opportunities to enhance their understanding of how this content knowledge feeds into their knowledge of how to deliver it in the classroom – pedagogical content knowledge – through subject associations, for example.
All teachers draw on the curriculum to secure their pedagogical content knowledge and all teachers update the curriculum with improved sequencing, narratives and explanations using evidence of the impact of the curriculum.
How the curriculum is being implemented, and its subsequent impact, is monitored routinely against the intended curriculum outcomes and teachers are provided with feedback that supports them in that implementation - improving their explanations, narratives and sequencing within and across lessons so that all students have access to and can achieve the intended curriculum outcomes.
Every teacher, irrespective of their stage, is a leader of curriculum and is afforded opportunity to enhance their practice and contribute to the curriculum development.
Bishop Ramsey School aspires to a knowledge rich curriculum where curriculum is the mastery of a body of subject-specific knowledge defined by the subject specialists taking account of the national curriculum and the shared wisdom of subject pedagogical communities.
The big ideas and invaluable knowledge of a subject which students will acquire are planned skillfully by specialist subject teams. Skills are developed naturally as students gain more subject specialist knowledge. All subjects taught have an intent statement which sets out the inherent worth and purpose of the subject as well the intent behind the curriculum. This is reviewed on an annual basis and all staff within the teams contribute and understand the intent.
The curriculum is sequenced in a way which allows an overarching narrative to exist across units of work, year groups, key stages and the whole time in the school. This enables each subject to teach hierarchical elements of the curriculum in the correct order. It also allows cumulative elements of the curriculum to be introduced in an order which is appropriate for each individual subject. Subject teams review the sequencing of the curriculum on an annual basis, taking into account the evidence derived from comparing actual outcomes with intended outcomes.
Each leader of a subject curriculum, along with their team of subject specialists, chooses the most appropriate resources for the curriculum. The curriculum dictates the developement and use of resources, rather than the other way around.
Assessment of the curriculum compares the actual outcomes of students with the intended outcomes of the curriculum. Each department plans the assessments that are used to monitor the effectiveness of the curriculum and use this to adjust the curriculum of future units to minimise any gaps in knowledge of the subject.
In all departments, teachers utilise live marking, corrections in class and whole class feedback to ensure students learn more and remember more. Staff review the achievements of their classes and then plan lessons to address misconceptions or extend progress.
To ensure that students learn more and remember more of our knowledge rich curriculum, in all departments, retrieval practice will be embedded across Schemes of Learning within the Programmes of Study.
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