Curriculum Overview

Curriculum Offer

Our curriculum is the vehicle with which we achieve our overarching aim: to build a brighter future for the students at Coundon Court.

Our curriculum is ambitious and provides a broad and balanced experience for our students. Above all, our curriculum is centred on the Coundon Court student, striving for academic excellence as well as providing rewarding enrichment opportunities both within school and within the wider world. At Coundon, the whole child is the whole point.

Our curriculum is far more than the delivery of a statutory range of subjects; it provides students with learning experiences and personal development opportunities that students will take with them for life. As Christine Counsell said “A curriculum exists to change the pupil, to give the pupil new power.” We want our students to leave Coundon Court with the power to set their own destination and achieve a fantastic future for themselves.

Our Curriculum has been designed around the following principles:

1. Knowledge is powerful: “what” we deliver has been justified; sequencing, interleaving and retrieval of key knowledge has been planned carefully in order for students to know more, remember more and do more.

2. Mastery: we believe students can continually improve and get better at knowing more, remembering more and doing more. We value modelling and deliberate practice to implement our rich curriculum to support student growth.

3. Experiences: Wider opportunities provide additional knowledge to support our students in making positive contributions to our community, city and beyond; giving our students the personal “tools” to direct their own lives and live a great life.

We are aware of the importance of curriculum refinement at Coundon Court and our Learning Team Leaders use their time with their faculties for an ongoing evaluation of the curriculum: discussing areas of strengths, areas for development and further enhancements that could be made to give our students the best learning experience; one they will remember. Our experienced Learning Team Leaders use their subject knowledge and subject research, as well as collaborating with colleagues across The Futures Trust and beyond, to ensure that their subject area provides our students with the ambitious, broad and balanced, knowledge-rich curriculum that can build a brighter future for our young people.

The Core Aims of our Curriculum:

•  To ensure that our students gain the powerful knowledge and skills they need to access the next stage of their education:             University, Higher Education or an Apprenticeship
•  To deliver a curriculum that promotes the subject beyond the classroom based on what it means to study the subject.
•  To provide students with the strong cultural capital which enables students to be active citizens in and outside of their community.
•  To provide students with the knowledge and experiences that help them grow in to good people who make the world a better place.

Supporting all Students

The learning experience of all students is at the heart of The Coundon Way; the Quality of Education for our students is at the forefront of our curriculum design and Coundon Learning Framework. We provide support and challenge for all of our students at a number of levels in order to ensure that all students are able to achieve their full potential:

· Quality First Teaching is our focus for all. The Coundon Learning Framework ensures lessons are carefully sequenced and delivered in order to allow students to build on their knowledge and understanding; facilitating all students to make the progress they need in the classroom. Effective modelling and scaffolding, opportunities for oracy development, and activities that aid memory retention ensures that all students are able to be successful.

· Students who require additional support in Literacy and Numeracy in order to be ready to access their Secondary Education receive additional support outside of lessons in order to close the gaps in their knowledge using small group work to support their learning.

· The Coundon Way is evident across all classrooms with teachers all using the same language in their lessons. Our classroom learning behaviours centred ensure the cognitive load on our students is reduced and classrooms are calm, orderly places where everyone can achieve.

Key Stage 3 Curriculum

At Key Stage 3, the Coundon Court curriculum doesn’t just offer the full National Curriculum to our students but it provides a curriculum that promotes a love of learning across a wide range of subjects. Our curriculum has been set up to promote the EBacc experience at Key Stage 4 as we recognise the importance of our students being able to compete with their peers on both an academic, personal and social level in order to achieve success in their lives.

The whole child is the whole point and therefore, we have a three-year Key Stage 3 that promotes the value and importance of all subjects. This gives students access to an exciting, broad curriculum throughout their time in Key Stage 3. We deliberately avoid large proportions of rotations of subjects so that students can frequently experience a wide range of subjects in order to find and grow their own talents. In Year 9, our students are supported to engage in selecting their subject areas for further study at GCSE. This process is carefully managed through a tailored programme and support from tutors and / or the SEND team. In Year 9, we begin to bridge the transition to GCSE.

Key Stage 4 Curriculum

Our Key Stage 4 curriculum has been developed to ensure that students study a range of qualifications that can support their own ambitions and properly prepare them for Post-16. Students deserve a curriculum that mirrors the ambition we have for them; a curriculum that can prepare them fully so they can access high tariff destinations as and when they choose.

Students take GCSEs in the core subjects of English Language, English Literature, Mathematics and Science. In addition to these subjects, students study Geography and/or History. Finally, students can choose the remainder of their subjects to direct their own lives. In addition, students also experience non-examined Core PE and Core RE as timetabled lessons to ensure students can grow as good people who can make the world a better place. Our Options subjects include: Art, Business Studies, Computer Science, Creative iMedia, Design & Technology, Drama, Food & Nutrition, French, Geography, History, Music, PE, Photography, RE, Spanish, Sociology, Textiles and Triple Science.

Key Stage 5 Curriculum

Our Sixth Form demonstrates the value of hard work. Housing proudly in the Old House, it sits at the centre of our campus as a continuous signal, to all students, where hard work can take you – to a Brighter Future, and  brighter destination. In recent years, our sixth form has been incredibly successful; securing excellent outcomes and ambitious destinations for our young people.

Our Key Stage 5 curriculum offers students the opportunity to choose 3 or 4 subjects from five option blocks. We have a diverse range of academic and vocational subjects that provide appropriate pathways for their desired destination Post 18 whether this be University or competitive apprenticeships. Students may also retake GCSE Maths or English, this is particularly important if students have not achieved a grade 4 in either subject at Key Stage 4. In 2024, all students who re-took English and / or Maths, achieved a grade 4 or above in their first attempt.

Our enrichment offer in Sixth form is extensive. It aims to support the development of the whole person and prepare them for the wider world. The enrichment offer is split across three pillars: Leadership, Innovation and Development. Within each pillar, students have opportunities to develop their wider skill sets, developing and growing as good people who will soon go out and make a positive difference to the world.

In addition to their subject choices and enrichment, students also receive a bespoke programme of Study Skills. This is delivered by our experienced Sixth Form Learning mentors and its planned curriculum covers topics such as effective revision techniques, promoting good study habits, personal development and healthy relationships in addition to an extensive careers programme that covers all Post 18 options and welcomes a number of external visitors.

Assessment at Coundon

Formative Assessment

At Coundon Court, feedback is frequent, effective and systematic in our classrooms. We know that giving students as much feedback as possible, in the moment, will lead to successful outcomes for our students. Students receive regular feedback using whole class feedback approaches or they will receive instant feedback in the lesson using our process of messy marking. Teachers consistently and frequently check for understanding within the classroom e.g. mini-whiteboards, cold call questioning and low-stakes quizzes.

Summative Assessment

At Coundon Court, summative assessments are planned for systematically as a tool to determine outcomes at specific end points for students, across their learning journey. All students in Years 7-10 and 12 will have a minimum of one knowledge quiz and one summative assessment per term; all students in Years 11 and 13 will have a minimum of two knowledge quizzes and two summative assessments per term. The outcomes of which are reported to parents termly.

Both forms of assessment are completed in class. The knowledge quiz is a low stakes quiz that assessed how much knowledge students have learned from a specific topic; this is the same knowledge that students will have been self-quizzing on for their home learning. The summative assessment tests the application of the knowledge students have learned through their self-quizzing and been assessed on in their knowledge quiz. By triangulating the way in which we plan, teach and assess student outcomes we know that we are giving our students the best possible chance of success.

Communication at Coundon

At Coundon Court, we recognise a barrier to success is not having effective communication skills. We understand the power of communication: reading, writing and oracy, in building brighter futures for our young people. We believe that oracy has the potential to unlock our students’ potential and provide them with a wide variety of opportunities in later life, as well as unlocking our students’ ability to write more fluently and expressively. We believe ‘if you can speak it, you can write it.’

Our students appreciate the value of successful, academic outcomes and at Coundon we distil that same level of appreciation into the importance of communication and attempt to remove barriers by teaching students what it means to be an effective communicator. An effective communicator will be self-confident and self-assured; they are able to immerse themselves into the wider world and community. The Coundon Way focuses on the art of communication: understanding the importance of formal language in the world of academia as well as our community. As part of the 5-7 year journey, students must recognise the significance of semantics, vocabulary choices and level of formality in your communication; they take every opportunity to present the best version of yourself to the world. 

Personal Development and the curriculum beyond the classroom

Throughout their time at Coundon, all students experience our comprehensive personal development programme. It is designed with our core values in mind and helps to build good character and grow good people; providing them with the knowledge and experiences that will help them develop as individuals so they can go on and lead a great life.

Our careers curriculum enables our students to see the value in hard work, to reach their full potential and build their own brighter future. Our PSHE and Citizenship curricula equips students with an understanding of how to be kind to themselves, be a healthy individual and how to flourish in the wider world. The assembly programme teaches our students about respect; it develops our students’ understanding of British Values whilst our House system supports the development of their resilience; as well as building their skills in teamwork and creativity.

We believe the curriculum beyond the classroom is just as valuable as the curriculum inside our classrooms. With a huge array of opportunities available to our students, we believe that every students should leave Coundon Court with invaluable learning experiences of memories that will last a lifetime. These include school trips, visiting speakers, House competitions and school clubs. Every student has the opportunity for a breadth of education that will prepare them well for the challenges associated with becoming an adult. This will also ensure our students are not only academically successful but have the knowledge and experiences that will enable them to direct their own lives and have a successful life. Figure 1 below shows the outline of our Personal Development programme. Students access this curriculum content, every week.

Fig 1.

Learning Behaviours

We are aware how vital it is that we celebrate, at every opportunity, the successes, progress and improvements of our students. Coundon Court believes in rewarding effort, recognising achievement and encouraging pupils to aspire to exceed our expectations. Rewards are a very powerful tool for staff to use. Our recognition strategy centres around our core values: students are rewarded and recognised in line with those three important character traits. We know that a student whose achievements are recognised in any way, whether publicly or in private, is more likely to make a positive impact within the Coundon Court community. The function of the reward system is to encourage all students to aspire to high standards in everything they do.

Tutor time and assemblies contain regular elements of celebration and reward. This is one of the ways we help to demonstrate the value of hard work, the power of kindness and the importance of respect. The purpose of our rewards is to set a framework within which the academic, sporting, social, cultural and the personal achievements of students can be recognised, rewarded, celebrated and recorded.

To create an environment where hard work, kindness and respect is valued, it’s important we have classrooms that actively promote and facilitate these defining characteristics. Our classroom learning behaviours help provide such an environment. Within our classrooms, we have the following expectations -

1. To accept and follow adult instructions

2. To SLANT

· Sit up straight

· Look at the teacher

· Ask and answer learning questions

· Never interrupt

· Try our best

3. Work with 100% effort, 100% of the time

We model and instruct our young people on how to behave. We correct them when it needs correcting and offer appropriate chances for students to re-direct themselves. We manage our classrooms so that they are positive areas for learning.