Through our Character and Academics approach to curriculum design, we express our belief that education is as much about developing young people’s character strengths and virtues as it is about developing their academic ability. This means that in addition to considering the sequencing of skills and knowledge within each subject area, at each stage of education, and how these build toward agreed end points, our curriculum design also considers the development of character and virtue literacy at each stage of education and how this enables pupils to flourish.

It follows that our curriculum has been carefully designed to:

• provide opportunities for pupils to develop their character and virtue literacy, focussing on the sets of character virtues denoted by principle, resilience, openness, understanding and discipline;
• provide opportunities to develop core skills of Literacy and Numeracy;
• provide opportunities to develop transferrable skills across the wide range of subjects;
• provide opportunities to develop a deep knowledge and understanding of the essential facts about our world that constitute ‘the best that has been thought and said’, starting from ‘that which has endured’;
• inculcate a cultural literacy that conveys British values;
• provide enriched experiences that our pupils may not otherwise enjoy and learn from;
• involve parents and carers at every opportunity;
• extend pupils’ involvement in the local community and beyond, developing their understanding of local, environmental and global issues through service learning; and,
• provide thorough coverage of the skills, concepts and knowledge set out in the National Curriculum programmes of study.

For more in-depth information about the development of character through our curriculum, or about the each of the subjects that make up our curriculum, please see our subject pages.