Curriculum Intent
At Barton Hill Academy, we want to inspire and support every pupil to achieve and to go on achieving - through each learning journey and through life as a whole. Our core curriculum vision is to provide all pupils with the necessary language, experiences, subject knowledge and skills – to become independent learners and positive contributors to society.
Our curriculum offer includes sharing, understanding and celebrating the rich and wonderful ethnic diversity of our school population, whilst also promoting the importance of shared British Values. Pupils are taught to reflect on similarities/differences between Britain and other countries; to encourage reflection on our position in the wider world. Pupils explore events that have changed world history and the impact of significant individuals – to inspire their own ideas for positive change.
Improving communication and interaction is key to our inclusive offering along with a strong focus on learning about healthy relationships – what they look like and how to maintain them; understanding personal feelings and how to support ourselves (and others). We use a variety of nurture-based approaches to provide support for our pupils (particularly pupils with Social, Emotional and Mental Health needs) and we teach oracy to promote positive interaction.
Through our oracy focussed curriculum, we set out to remove barriers to communication and learning – teaching pupils to use English, subject-specific and technical vocabulary. We extend pupil thinking through cognitive reasoning tasks, teaching them how to convey and summarise considered arguments. Furthermore, we teach pupils how to consider their audience whilst expressing themselves sensitively, respectfully and confidently. Oracy teaching enhances language development for all pupils and helps us to build on the multilingual knowledge of our high percentage of EAL learners.
Another important aspect of our curriculum involves learning about socio-economic diversity – in relation to history and the present day. As our local area is in Bristol’s lowest quintile for deprivation, we strive to maximise pupil cultural capital through a variety of means. Pupils are offered a range of trips/visit experiences to drive classroom learning; they are taught to read through high quality phonics teaching; they explore contexts surrounding a range of classic and diverse texts; they acquire new language and develop their reading comprehension skills through our reading comprehension programme. Additionally, we support pupils to link geographical knowledge and history relating to other wider curriculum subjects (including music and the arts) whilst exploring and recognising changes to social attitudes in Britain.
Our broad and rich curriculum offer meets the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum, while content is shaped by assessment findings. Learning is designed to be progressively challenging and adapted to meet the needs of all of our pupils, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). Moreover, our curriculum is sequenced to enable pupils to accumulate knowledge, skills and understanding, so that upon leaving our school, each and every one of them is ready for their next steps in secondary education.
