Curriculum Statement

If you require any additional information about the curriculum at Bovington Academy, please contact Liesel Muraro

(Curriculum Lead)

lmuraro@bovington-aspirations.org

 

Our vision is to deliver an authentic education for the 21st century for children from the age of 4-11.

The aim of the curriculum is to ensure all children are inspired with a passion for learning and achieve high levels of academic success in a broad range of subjects whilst at the same time equipping them with the knowledge and skills required to play an active and successful role in today’s highly competitive and fast-changing world.

Central to the philosophy of the curriculum delivered in Bovington Academy is to provide an authentic education for the world today with insight in the world and core knowledge as critical foundation so that all children can participate in the full richness of the human experience.  To this end, the curriculum allows for the development of the knowledge, skills and qualifications required for success in the world today. Additionally, all children in Bovington Academy learn in a challenging, engaging and supportive environment through a well-thought-out curriculum which encourages creativity, celebrates diversity and utilize knowledge, skills and cultural experiences of the local community to be active citizens in modern Britain.

Bovington Academy’s curriculum aims are:

  • Ensure a broad curriculum coverage
  • Develop a knowledge rich curriculum
  • Ensure that knowledge acquisition is enhanced through being effectively applied to real-life situations and problems
  • Widen knowledge acquisition through single discipline and transdiscipline learning
  • Ensure all learning is challenging and engaging
  • Develop transferable future skills through the application of knowledge into actions for success.
  • Ensure high rates of progress for all children.
  • Promote teacher planning that is integral to the success of the curriculum and also manageable.

Bovington Academy like any Aspirations Academy shares a common philosophy with three guiding principles which in effect are our core values. These are central to and underpin our curriculum:

  • Self-worth: creating a sense of belonging and accomplishment
  • Engagement : inspiring curiosity and a spirit of adventure in everyone
  • Purposedeveloping the confidence to take action to reach our goals

In applying knowledge to real-world contexts and allowing young learners to take the lead in using this knowledge it allows them to find solutions and to deepen their learning.  At Bovington Academy, we ensure the following nine Core Principles are clearly featured in every element of the academy’s work:

  • High Expectations – Being the very best you can be in your school and community
  • Opportunity – Matching your interests with activities that will help you to leave school well-rounded and confident
  • Challenge – Making your learning exciting and relevant to the real world
  • Talent Development – Enhancing your natural strengths and abilities so you thrive in school and beyond
  • Innovation and Enterprise – Supporting your creativity by encouraging you to ask ‘Why?’ and ‘Why not?’
  • Makers and Creators – Being a creator, not just a consumer, of technology in our digital world
  • Global – Having cultural awareness needed to communicate in our interconnected world
  • Employability – Equipping you with the skills and abilities you’ll need to excel in our ever-changing world
  • With Big Dreams and Hard Work – Aspirations means to dream about the future while being inspired in the present to reach those dreams.

Our curriculum has been developed to meet the needs of children so that they have both embodied and institutional cultural capital with Employability and Future Skills as the centerpiece of our educational provision.  This includes developing:

  • Resilience
  • Cross-cultural competency
  • Communication
  • Collaboration
  • Creative and adaptive thinking
  • Cognitive load management
  • Sense-making
  • Media literacy
  • Entrepreneurialism
  • Transdisciplinarity
  • Productivity and accountability

Implementation of the curriculum

Our curriculum is rooted in the development of knowledge, the ability to apply knowledge and the acquisition of future skills.  This is achieved in a number of ways, for children in year 1-6 they are taught maths and English discreetly in the morning. The afternoon’s are mainly set aside for APPLIED Trans-discipline Learning (ATL) assignments (please see further details below).  During ATL, children focus on a driving question which pose simply stated real world dilemmas. They pose predicaments that children find interesting and actually want to answer. The question drives children to discuss, inquire, and investigate the topic. It then pushes the children towards a final production or solution.

 

All our teachers have a common understanding of the academy’s curriculum aims and assessment is used well to check understanding and inform teaching.  Teacher subject knowledge is used to promote discussions, systematically check understanding, address identified misconceptions adapted to address children’s needs.  SEND and Disadvantaged (including Service children) are well target and set up to achieve well due to curriculum meeting their needs.  

In addition, this year we will be using a system called Motional to work on supporting children’s social and emotional development, which is especially important for our Service children, which make up approximately 60% of our cohort.

Impact

At Bovington Academy, we believe that a well-thought-out curriculum which meets the needs of children should lead to at least good results which reflect what they have learned.  The impact of the curriculum is evaluated through the following measures:

  • The percentage of students who achieve at least expected academic progress and high levels of attainment in national assessments and examinations such as KS2 SATS
  • Progress and attainment of current children across key stages
  • ‘Cultural Capital’ for disadvantaged and children with SEND
  • The range of high-level 21st century skills developed by children 
  • The social and emotional well-being of all children, including a high-quality provision for our Service children
  • Attendance data
  • Engagement in enrichment activities 
  • Pupil Voice

Early Years Foundation Stage: Reception

At Bovington Academy children in Reception are provided with a stimulating learning environment which encourages learning through play – a fundamental part of early learning.

We use the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum to plan learning opportunities in the following areas.

EYFS areas of learning and their associated Early Learning Goals

Characteristics of effective learning:

Playing and exploring – engagement

  • Finding out and exploring
  • Playing with what they know
  • Being willing to ‘have a go’

Active learning – motivation

  • Being involved and concentrating
  • Keeping trying
  • Enjoying achieving what they set out to do

Creating and thinking critically – thinking

  • Having their own ideas
  • Making links
  • Choosing ways to do things

Prime Areas:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

  • Making relationships
  • Self-confidence and self-awareness
  • Managing feelings and behaviour

Physical Development

  • Moving and handling
  • Health and self-care

Communication and Language

  • Listening and attention
  • Understanding
  • Speaking

Specific Areas:

Literacy

  • Reading
  • Writing

Mathematics

  • Numbers
  • Shape, space and measure

Understanding of the world

  • People and communities
  • The world
  • Technology

Expressive Arts and Design

  • Exploring and using media and materials
  • Being imaginative

Key Stage 1

Compulsory national curriculum subjects at primary school are:

  • English
  • Maths
  • Science
  • Design and technology
  • History
  • Geography
  • Art and design
  • Music
  • Physical education (PE), including swimming
  • Computing
  • Ancient and modern foreign languages (at key stage 2)

We also cover religious education (RE) but you as parents / carers can ask for your child/ren to be taken out of the whole lesson or part of it. We also teach:

  • personal, social and health education (PSHE)
  • citizenship

 

 

Key Stage 2

Compulsory national curriculum subjects at primary school are:

  • English
  • Maths
  • Science
  • Design and technology
  • History
  • Geography
  • Art and design
  • Music
  • Physical education (PE), including swimming
  • Computing
  • Ancient and modern foreign languages (at key stage 2)

We also cover religious education (RE) but you as parents / carers can ask for your child/ren to be taken out of the whole lesson or part of it. We also teach:

  • personal, social and health education (PSHE)
  • citizenship
  • modern foreign languages

Curriculum Content: Year 4

The curriculum incorporates the national curriculum 2014 statutory requirements and Department of Education guidance. Supplementary, the curriculum of the school reflects the local context and development needs of pupils. 

Presently, Aspirations Academies Trust has introduced an exciting and creative curriculum which means the curriculum is implemented is two-fold:

  1. The ‘No limits: Curriculum for success in the 21st century’ is being developed and will be introduced in all Aspirations Academies in September 2019 initially in Years 4, 7 and 12. The intention is that the main features of this curriculum will eventually inform a common curriculum approach from the ages of 4 to 18. The expectation is for each academy to follow the collective curriculum outlines and philosophy whilst also putting its own personal and local stamp on their own curriculum which meets the needs of their particular body of students. The shared, collective curriculum will enable sufficient commonality of subjects, topics and assignments to enable cross-Trust moderation and raising of standards.
  2. Currently in the other year groups (not 4, 7 and 12) the curriculum is unique to each academy. In the primary phase there is some commonality in that the focus is on English, maths and the Aspirations (creative) curriculum, whilst in secondary phase there has been a move towards using the same GCSE and A level subject specifications in order to drive the curriculum across all year groups.  The Early Years Foundation profile along with the National Curriculum forms the basis of the curriculum plan in all Aspirations Academies. The knowledge and skills development required in each subject are carefully sequenced and mapped out within each year group and across each Key stage. As a Multi-Academy Trust that educates children from the age of 2 to 18, we also make sure to ensure that there is clear sequencing and progression of knowledge and skills between each Key Stage so there is a clear progression pathway from the age of 2 to 18.

In order to ensure the development of a curriculum that ensures a depth of knowledge, the application of knowledge and the development of future skills, the central feature of the ‘No Limits’ model is the development of a curriculum that fully embraces both single-discipline learning (CORE) and trans-discipline learning (APPLIED). Both have a place in the curriculum. The CORE learning sessions occur both as regular timetabled single-discipline learning sessions as well as during the ATL assignment sessions as specific knowledge workshops. The APPLIED Trans-discipline Learning (ATL) assignments combine several subjects and run from 3 to 11 weeks in length for at least 2 hours most days for up to 8 hours a week. These assignments are designed to apply CORE learning to real-world situations across different domains to ensure student learning is relevant, engaging and challenging. The curriculum structure:

  • Core learning (single discipline subjects): English, Maths, Science (single sciences), Computer Science, MFL, Art and Design, Geography, History.
  • Transdiscipline learning: Incorporating a combination of the following subjects: English, Maths, Science (single sciences), Computer Science, Citizenship, MFL, Art and Design, Geography, History.
  • Performance: PE*, Music, Drama and Dance
  • Assessment, Presentation and Personal Education (APP) weeks: The presentation of high quality transdiscipline subject assignment, assessment of all core subjects, PSHEE*, sex education*, food education*, citizenship* and Religious Education.

Where next

Read Write Inc (RWI)

At Bovington Academy we implement Read Write Inc (RWI) programme to get our children off to a flying start with their English skills. The programme…

Read Write Inc (RWI)

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