St Mary's Catholic High School. M29

Curriculum for Life

Curriculum for Life at St. Mary's

Intent:

At St Mary’s We aim to provide a broad and stimulating curriculum that equips our students with the necessary knowledge, skills and aptitudes to lead safe and successful lives. St Mary’s encourages all students to be active contributors to the community we serve. As well as living healthy physical lifestyles, St Mary’s aims to create aspiring individuals that enhance their God given talents, whilst demonstrating and nurturing potential.

We recognize that each student is valued and celebrated in the unique image of God, and we encourage the diverse range of personal values explored in our personal development programme.

Our Curriculum for Life programme is rewarding yet challenging with a key purpose to shape and develop cognitive fluency. We deliver content that is aligned with the guidance from the Department of Education, but also with a focus on well- being and social and emotional mental health. This is to ensure that we nurture the whole child, equipping our students with the confidence to excel in their seven-year learning journey at St Mary’s as well as becoming successful citizens in the wider community.

Our curriculum for life programme prepares our students for the ‘tests of life’ in an ever-changing society and we believe the development of character is displayed in the positive decisions we make beyond the classroom, with Faith, Hope and Love underpinning everything we do.

We aim to embed a curriculum that builds on prior learning and fosters positive future choices and actions.
Our curriculum embraces challenging and complex material whilst always being time and age appropriate.
We adhere to statutory guidance that allows for us to build in the wider community pathing the way for our future stars.

We always ensure our content is inclusive and diverse whilst also exploring the British Values. We understand the context of our community and aim to remove barriers, building resilience and reinforcing that ‘life is a journey’. St Mary’s creates environments to optimise learning, and the Curriculum for Life knowledge is creative, purposeful, and meaningful.

St Mary’s is passionate about developing the oracy of students and we aim to create cross-curricular links to embed interconnected learning.

Sixth Form

Our Curriculum for Life programme for post 16 education is designed to give students the knowledge, understanding, attitudes and practical skills to live safe, healthy and productive lives.

The knowledge rich offering aims to raise aspirations and improve the life chances of all students whilst nurturing students personal, social, moral and cultural dimensions.

The curriculum for life content allows students to delve more deeply into a broad and diverse range of issues relating to their own personal development as they prepare for their KS5 courses and life beyond St Mary’s.

We want our Sixth Form students to learn to be safe and successful in all aspects of life.

The delivery of knowledge aims to instil the confidence to face the challenges of life as young adults, whether that be in education or the world of work.

We will develop skills and aptitudes which are crucial to navigating the challenges and opportunities of the modern world and are increasingly valued by employers.

Curriculum for Life at St. Mary's - Implementation

Our Curriculum for Life content covers all personal, social, health and economic education as well as CEIAG. As part of our broad and balanced curriculum, the programme includes the teaching of RSE (Relationships, Sex and Health education).

We ensure that the teaching about human love and relationships is guided by our faith as well as equipping all children with the clear and relevant information they need to maintain successful and happy relationships and healthy minds and bodies.

Ten Ten’s RSE programme, ‘Life to the Full’, will teach Relationship, Sex and Health Education within the context of a Christian understanding of human sexuality rooted in the wisdom and teaching of the Catholic Church.

Please see more information regarding Ten Ten and our RSE content delivery here.

Our curriculum follows a thematic approach, and content is reviewed and regularly amended and in response to wider social issues. Fortnightly lessons are delivered with the use of booklets from expert teaching that allows our content to be accessible.

We are passionate about Investing in our pupil's personal development programme for students to grow in God’s image. In our long-term plan, we focus on the statutory content whilst ensuring we have pathed the way to developing social and moral skills.

We aim for our students to express themselves without judgement in relevant matters whilst immersing themselves in a learning journey.

We encourage our students to have a voice at the centre of their wellbeing and mindfulness whilst letting their light shine.

At St Mary’s our Parents have a voice and we aim to build and extend knowledge at home in conjunction with school. Parents are consulted on and have a say in their children’s learning.

Key knowledge is assessed via our ipsative model with baseline activities and reflective pieces undertaken in each lesson. This allows our teachers to draw on prior knowledge and develop new knowledge areas. All of which ultimately leads to students leaving with key messages and actions to ‘impact their future learning’.

Our curriculum encourages the enhancement of communicating skills which is encapsulated in our ‘debates and discussion' tasks which are prominent in all Curriculum for Life lessons, as well as during form time.

St Marys Catholic High School

Half Term 1

Half Term 2