A Curriculum for Bowland
Our curriculum is designed to ensure our pupils can live a life of choice and opportunity, whilst recognising their role in our society and their community. Our values of tradition, care and challenge are interwoven into our school curriculum and underpin our decision making.
We provide our pupils with opportunities to develop their leadership skills, to become strong communicators and to lead healthy lifestyles. We know every pupil who joins Bowland as an individual; our small school enables pupils to develop their own strengths and interests through a range of experiences and academic study. Strong, positive relationships ensure our pupils become caring, tolerant and inclusive members of society. Our pupils are resilient, determined and confident young people, who consistently represent the school exceptionally well and who we are proud to work with.
Our curriculum contains two elements which are designed to complement each other: the academic curriculum taught in defined subject disciplines and our enriching co-curricular experiences. We run a comprehensive programme of extra-curricular activities including visits to our local area and further afield. We are committed to ensuring pupils’ learning extends beyond the classroom, making use of our idyllic rural setting, our exceptional sports facilities and our long history of excellence in performing arts.
The curriculum is guided by these principles:
- Inspiring: The curriculum at Bowland inspires our students, it provides experiences and opportunities which will shape our pupils’ careers, inspire future study and create memories that will last a lifetime.
- Knowledge-rich: Our curriculum contains ‘the best which has been thought and said’, including the substantive and disciplinary knowledge required to ensure our pupils can be successful in academic study beyond Bowland. The curriculum enables mastery within specific subject-domains and at Key Stage 3 covers the entirety of the National Curriculum. Our curriculum is designed to include content beyond the National Curriculum which enriches understanding and builds cultural awareness.
- Ambitious: The curriculum is challenging for all pupils, ensuring that they can achieve their full potential. We expect our pupils to become evaluative and reflective learners with the skills to manage their own learning. We prepare pupils for successful lives, developing their ability to self-regulate, be resilient and adapt within an evolving and global society.
- Accessible: Inclusion sits at the heart of everything we do and we ensure that pupils have the personalisation, choice and support that they need to be successful. The same curriculum is available to all students, including those with SEND. Difficult content is re-contextualised, not delayed or removed.
- Research-informed: We make use of cognitive science to inform our curriculum delivery. Evidence-informed practice forms the core of our continuing professional development programmes. There is an understanding that strong curriculum planning will include carefully chosen components crucial for subsequent learning and planned interleaving. We build opportunities for retrieval of prior learning to strengthen long-term memory and development of schemata.
Detailed information about our curriculum for parents/carers and pupils can be found on our dedicated curriculum site. You can visit this by clicking on the link below:
https://sites.google.com/bowland.atctrust.org.uk/acurriculumforbowland/home
