Northampton Academy Overall Curriculum Intent
Northampton Academy's overall curriculum intent is laid out below. It is broken down into the general Curriculum Intent and then the Curriculum Intent for students within each Key Stage.
The Curriculum at Northampton Academy aims to provide an excellent education which brings out the best in all our students and prepares them for success in education and life. The curriculum equips students with powerful knowledge, maximises their cognitive development, and nourishes the whole person and their individual talents. The curriculum, therefore, liberates and empowers, providing students with the confidence to understand and shape the world around them, to be active and economically self-sufficient citizens, and to ‘enter into the conversation of mankind’ (Michael Oakeshott).
The teachers and leaders are fully involved in developing our curriculum, which is based on these key principles:
- Entitlement: All pupils have the right to learn what is in the curriculum, and we ensure all pupils are taught the whole of it.
- Coherence: Taking the National Curriculum as its starting point, our curriculum is carefully sequenced so that powerful knowledge builds term by term and year by year. We make meaningful connections within subjects and between subjects.
- Mastery: We ensure that foundational knowledge, skills, and concepts are secure before moving on. Pupils revisit prior learning and apply their understanding in new contexts.
- Adaptability: The core content – the ‘what’ – of the curriculum is stable, but teachers will adapt lessons – the ‘how’ – to meet the needs of their own classes.
- Representation: All pupils see themselves in our curriculum, and our curriculum takes all pupils beyond their immediate experience.
- Education with Character: Our curriculum - which includes the taught subject timetable as well as spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development, our co-curricular provision, and the ethos and ‘hidden curriculum’ of the school – is intended to spark curiosity and to nourish both the head and the heart.
Christine Counsell describes curriculum as ‘content structured as narrative over time’. As a school, we can ensure that all our pupils experience a broad and ambitious curriculum that builds over time – week by week, term by term and year by year. In doing so, children bring their own experience into a shared story that enables them to leave our care with confidence and curiosity.
The Northampton Academy Curriculum enables all students to develop a strong set of values and to know how these apply to their lives and studies. They should learn to build positive relationships with each other and with adults, show empathy, and communicate in a way that allows them to disagree with others without falling out or arguing. They will be able to question what they hear and form a logical argument. They have an opinion and can articulate their point effectively, but are tolerant of others' views.
Students understand that learning is not necessarily fun and is often hard; they appreciate learning for its own sake, rather than for explicit reward. They learn for a purpose and have an idea of what they want to be and where they want to go.
A Northampton Academy student cares for the environment, understands the world we live in and their own place in it. They are sensible and safe consumers of modern technology, the internet and social media; they understand how to use technology in a positive way and the risks associated with poor use. Students are considerate of their own and others’ mental well-being, and they have a good understanding of how a sensible diet, nutrition, and exercise affect their health. Our students have experienced a broader aspect of life beyond their immediate community, broadening their understanding that other people think differently and hold different beliefs.