What is the curriculum?

The curriculum is the entirety of our planned educational provision. In addition to formal, timetabled provision, at Alton Convent School significant parts of our curriculum are delivered through an extended range of opportunities and are embedded in the whole of the school's shared life through the outworking of our values and ethos. The focus of this document is the formal provision.

Aims

In planning and delivering the school's curriculum, we subscribe to the aims of the National Curriculum,:

• to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and to achieve;
• to promote pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and prepare all pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life.

 In interpreting these aims within our school, we strive to ensure that each child:

• fulfils their God given potential, to His greater glory;
• develops as a rationally autonomous, thinking individual;
• is equipped to play a full and active role in the communities and society to which they belong; and
• is well prepared for the next stage of their educational journey (through the development of greater independence, self esteem and a love of learning, as well as specific provision such as careers guidance, exam preparation, mock interviews and advice on transition).

Furthermore, as a Catholic school, our concern goes beyond the development of merely each individual in our care, to look to the common good of the communities and society to which we aim that each pupil will uniquely contribute:

"For a true education aims at the formation of the human person in the pursuit of his ultimate end and of the good of the societies of which, as man, he is a member, and in whose obligations, as an adult, he will share." (Gravissimum Educationis)

Principles of the Curriculum

The school's educational provision is appropriate to the needs, age and ability of each pupil, with increasing complexity as pupils progress through the school, and attention paid to accessibility and challenge at each stage. 

Through personalised support within the class and, in the prep school, additional 1-1 and small group support, the individual educational needs of pupils are met. Where a child has a Statement of special educational needs, appropriate additional arrangements would be in place to meet the requirements listed. Teachers have the flexibility to tailor the educational provision to the needs of each child, whilst meeting their entitlement to a broad, accessible and challenging education. 

In the absence of other requirements, we also aim that each pupil's individual aptitudes and enthusiasms are met, so even the youngest pupils will have the opportunity to choose from a range of tasks or toys, a wide range of extra curricular opportunities are on offer in the upper prep, and senior pupils may choose from a range of GCSE options and AS/A2 courses. We recognize the unique contribution that each child makes to the communities of our classrooms and to the school. 

Our curriculum provision ensures the development of core skills, without which access to the rest of the curriculum would be limited:

• listening,
• speaking,
• reading,
• writing,
• numeracy, and
• information technology capability

Our curriculum provides education within a comprehensive range of areas of learning, and from Year 1 and above is structured through the delivery of discrete, yet interrelated subjects covering:

• language (English, with French introduced at Year 1 and further languages on offer in the senior school),
• mathematics (including further maths at A-level),
• science (as an integrated subject in the prep school, as biology, chemistry and physics in the senior school, with psychology available from GCSE),
• technology (though ICT, design work within the art curriculum, and media work as part of the English, art and media studies programmes),
• humanities (prep school humanities encompassing history and geography, taught separately on entry to the senior school, with additional subjects such as law and sociology being available at GCSE and A-level),
• physical education (provision for PE, including swimming for R-Y3, on the timetable, with additional extracurricular opportunities),
• the creative arts (music, art and drama provided as timetabled subjects from Year 1 up, media studies at GCSE and A-level, and extensive extra curricular provision), and
• personal growth (PSHME and RE as timetabled subjects, prep school circle time and citizenship in the senior school; critical thinking within the sixth form).

Running across the subject curriculum are a number of commonalities to our curricular provision:

• Further personal, social, health and moral education is delivered through other subject areas, within the overarching context of the school's Christian ethos;
• The school's Catholic faith underpins our teaching, which thus may further promote pupils spiritual and moral development, often in intangible ways. Indeed the school's founding constitution states that:

"The knowledge which the pupils acquire of the world [and] of life is seen in the light of faith"

• Much of our pupil's learning takes place within a social setting, with classes, and indeed the school as a whole, seen as learning communities, further promoting pupil's social development and sense of responsibility to others
• In our teaching, we strive to inculcate a lifelong love of learning in our pupils, which better prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life.

In addition to the formal, timetabled curriculum, the school's extended curriculum plays a crucial role in meeting the above aims:

• The extracurricular programme provides further opportunites for learning and opportunity for pupils to exercise a degree of autonomy
• A programme of educational visits and particularly the extensive residential programme (from Year 4 up) significantly extend the range of educational experiences available to pupils and provides for personal and social growth in ways relatively inaccessible within the confines of the classroom
• The VIth form enrichment programme provides additional educational opportunities and an important counterbalance of shared breadth to the specialism that characterizes A-level work.

Basis

• Care is taken to ensure that provision for those below the age of compulsory schooling is appropriate to their needs. It is built on QCA'a Foundation Stage Guidance, with the curriculum structured according to the Early Learning Goals, but is not limited to or restricted by these documents.
• The curriculum in Key Stages 1-3 is to an extent built on that of the National Curriculum, extending education in a number of areas, placing greater emphasis on some aspects than others,  and ‘opting out' of provision in a small number of other areas.
  Attention has been paid to the National Strategies, with the numeracy and literacy strategies being used as a basis for much of the mathematics and English programmes in the prep school.
  The school's religious education provision follows the Catholic Here I Am and Icons programmes.
  The requirements of boys' senior school entrance examinations are taken into consideration when planning provision in Year 6.
  Further details are given in subject policies and schemes of work.
• The detail of the formal curriculum in Key Stage 4 and at A-level is to a large extent determined by the specific requirements of each exam syllabus, although heads of department enjoy considerable autonomy in their choice of specifications, and these are under regular review.

Other documents

The delivery of the school's curriculum is described in further detail in the Teaching and Learning policy, individual subject policies for the prep and senior schools, schemes of work and teachers' medium- and short-term planning.