Curriculum

The Intent behind the curriculum at Pensby High School 

The intention of our curriculum is very simple. At Key Stage 3 the two most important principles at play are:

1. Acknowledging the gaps and strengths in a student’s learning as they enter the school from across the broad range of feeder primaries and ensuring that all students get their curriculum entitlement.
2. Ensuring the curriculum is designed to reflect an increasing depth and progression in students understanding of knowledge and skills to ensure that they are therefore able to make links across their learning, linking different curriculum areas, topics and periods of learning.

This means that, in order to address where our students are in terms of the basics on entry, we need to provide time to ensure the basics are strong enough to build the whole curriculum on; ensuring students have solid foundations in numeracy and literacy, whilst developing positive attitudes towards their education and futures by engendering high aspirations for themselves and their peers, which are embedded into the curriculum at every stage. 

Many students enter this school with attainment significantly below their peers and facing significant challenges with maths, reading and aspects of the literacy/English curriculum.  Many of our students are not secondary-ready and they need to be supported to gain the best possible outcomes.  To this end we maximise time in the core curriculum, as this is a fundamental part of student success.  Progress and attainment have been strong in both English and Mathematics and as a result, students are successful in all areas of the curriculum.

At Key Stage 4 there are again two key principles: ensuring that students have the greatest breadth of curriculum possible, and that our students close the gaps to their peers. This means that to give four GCSE options and provide sufficient opportunities for areas such as English and Mathematics.  We recognise that given the level of challenge across the curriculum, we need our students to close the gaps in these key areas in comparison to their peers nationally, in order that they can be successful across the breadth of the curriculum offer.

Quite simply, we want our students to learn more. This regardless of what they might achieve as an outcome at GCSE, because the more we can learn and connect, the better the outcome at GCSE is likely to be.

Kevin Flanagan
Headteacher