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Curriculum

Denbigh School offers a varied and knowledge-rich curriculum to all its students. Our core purpose is combining the teaching of discipline-specific knowledge with the application of skills and understanding in a safe and secure environment across a broad range of subjects. Our aim is to ensure an excellent education for all our students based on providing the core knowledge that students need to succeed throughout their lives. Our curriculum draws on the best that has been thought, said, and done in each subject, allowing students to appreciate, make sense of and broaden their view of the world. Through our teaching, we aim to develop the whole person so that each student can maximise their ability to both function, and influence change, in their future environments.

The key principles we have embraced in developing our curriculum are:

  • All students are entitled to a curriculum that is appropriate to them and which provides each student with the opportunity to fulfil their potential.  
  • Hand-in-hand with the knowledge that students need we champion the values of engagement, respect, kindness and doing no harm.  These values underpin and inform our interactions with each other.
  • For all students learning is about making sense of the curriculum and both teachers and students have a responsibility to ensure that concepts are mastered before new ones are introduced so that the hierarchy of knowledge is respected and maintained in all subjects.
  • Our curriculum defines what is to be taught, in what order and when.  It is the teacher’s role to decide on the best way to ensure that learning occurs, however students’ experience should be consistent, challenging, and inspiring so that students love learning and feel the awe and wonder of discovering new information and understanding.  This will, in turn, encourage them to want to learn more and more deeply.

Details of the curriculum studied in every subject in every year group can be found on our faculty pages along with details of GCSE and Post 16 courses on offer. Students who enter in Year 7 study English; Mathematics; Science; Art; Design and Technology; Computing; Geography; History; Philosophy Religion & Ethics; Modern Foreign Languages; Creative Arts; Personal Development and Physical Education. There is also a Personal, Social and Health Education programme, which is ‘mapped’ within the curriculum and the tutorial programme and is based on our school values of ‘Be Engaged, Be Kind & Respectful and Do No Harm’. Students work in ability groups in Maths and these will be based on prior attainment in the student’s previous school and performance in baseline tests. We review these groupings on a termly basis after each progress report.

Students who enter different year groups as in-year admissions will be informed of the current curriculum offer for that year group by the Head of Year as part of the induction process.
 

Assessment and Feedback

Assessment and Feedback will take place in line with the requirements set out in the Teaching and Learning Code. Faculty specific Assessment and Feedback Guidelines can be found on each Faculty’s webpage.

  • 1) Assessment will be primarily formative.
  • 2) Assessment will form part of every lesson in the school.
  • 3) Teachers should maximise opportunities for questioning all students in the lesson.
  • 4) Teachers should frequently use low stakes assessment to systematically test students’ cumulative acquisition of knowledge.
  • 5) Teachers will follow the Faculty Assessment and Feedback guidelines which will be based on the following principals:
    • – Assessment and feedback need to be manageable for staff and meaningful for students
    • – All classes must receive regular, good quality feedback
    • – Assessments should provide teachers with sufficient information to award an accurate CLG
    • – There is no minimum requirement for written marking
    • – A range of approaches can be used to feedback to students
    • – There should be a consistent approach across subjects or key stages
    • – Books and folders should receive some ‘maintenance scrutiny’ once per ½ term to maintain good quality presentation
  • 6) Students must show a pride in the presentation of their work. Exercise books and folders must be well presented.
  • 7) Where students do not maintain a high standard of presentation, they will be responsible for the cost of replacement.

Progress cycle

At Denbigh School we monitor and track the progress and engagement of students and inform parents/carers at regular intervals of this progress throughout the year. All students will receive a Progress Report which gives a clear indication of how they are progressing with their studies.  

The Progress Report will include, for each subject: 

  • A homework completion percentage.
  • Punctuality information. 
  • Shares and behaviour points issued.
  • An Attitude to Learning Score.
  • A Current Learning Grade.

During the first term of Year 7, Parents/Carers will receive information about how we report progress and set targets for achievement. There will also be opportunities to talk to your son/daughter’s tutor and various leaders in the school to ask questions regarding this process.