Our aim is to provide an excellent education for all our students, which brings out the best in all of them and prepares them for success in life.  We provide a curriculum which provides children with the core knowledge they need for success in education and later life, that maximises their cognitive development, develops the whole person and the talents of the individual and allows all children to become active citizens and economically self-sufficient.

KS3

Throughout key stage 3, students will develop their knowledge and skills in biology, chemistry and physics. As well as consolidating the curriculum content, students will acquire working scientifically skills throughout all topics, these will include completing practical activities to develop scientific reasoning and understanding of key concepts. Students will revisit key concepts throughout key stage 3 multiple times to consolidate and build their scientific understanding ensuring that all students are prepared for key stage 4.

KS4

During Key stage 4 we build upon the scientific concepts that have been introduced at key stage 3.  We study the combined or separate science course from AQA.  Students are also given the opportunity to study separate sciences.  A large part of the curriculum and program of study involves the required practical experiments.  This practical element helps students embed their knowledge of the relevant concepts in biology, chemistry and physics.  Our students are then best prepared with science knowledge for there everyday lives or to continue their studies into key stage 5.

KS5

At KS5 we offer students the opportunity to continue their studies with a range of Level 3 vocational and A Level courses.  We build on what has been learnt at KS5 within our Biology, Chemistry and Physics A levels. There is a practical endorsement award alongside these to assess students technical and analytical skills.   Applied Science is an alternative to the traditional A levels and more practical based.  In addition we offer A level Psychology, an intriguing study into the brain and behaviour, and a applied Criminology courses.  Both these courses have foundations within our science curriculum but expand into new areas of study.

In science, we use KPI activities to measure the progress of our KS3 students. Each activity comes with success criteria that teachers will use to mark the students work. Students are graded with ‘not met,’ ‘partially met’ and ‘met.’ During feedback teachers discuss the common misconceptions and pose learning questions to close the gap in knowledge. Analysis of assessment and mock data helps teachers decide which units may need to be re-taught; teachers will make a decision on whether to teach units again if students have poorly performed or challenge students by looking at units from a different perspective. In KS3 data is used to make changes to class sets, those students that consistently perform well in assessments and KPI activities will be able to move to a set where the work is more challenging. Knowledge organisers are used in KS3 and teachers use them to set homework activities. Students need to learn a set of key words and their definitions. Students are tested on these key words with regular short quizzes. Extra-curricular clubs have been introduced at the academy and science offers a STEM club. Students get to do a STEM club that focuses on the KS3 curriculum and links the learning of information to fun, interactive science experiments. The impact of the curriculum in terms of students understanding the practical importance of science in our every- day life is measured through participation and engagement in science extra-curricular activities.