“The school has raised its expectations of how well pupils achieve. Pupils show interest through discussion and talking about their learning. As a result, pupils progress well through the curriculum.” – Ofsted, November 2024
Curriculum
At Dawlish College, our curriculum exemplifies our core values: ‘We work hard,’ ‘We work together’, and ‘We make things better.’ The principle that guides our curriculum vision is participation. We believe that a well-taught, high-quality curriculum should equip students with the knowledge that will allow them to participate meaningfully in the world. They should feel empowered to take ownership of how they engage in the world.
In practice, this means our curriculum should do three things:
• Ensure students can direct the course of their future study and employment prospects
• Equip students with the essential knowledge that will enable them to contribute to wider cultural life and the social and political conversations of the day
• Enrich students’ lives through an appreciation of knowledge for its own sake
To help us achieve these goals, we ask three questions that support and underpin our curriculum design and monitoring:
• Is this ambitious?
• What essential knowledge does this provide?
• How are we promoting reading and literacy?
1. Ambition
Each curriculum subject is designed with student participation in mind. Within this, we carefully select and sequence the knowledge that is taught to ensure that it is ambitious. We do this, for example, through careful selection of texts in literature.
At Dawlish College, we believe our students can participate meaningfully in the world. To support this, we teach students powerful knowledge so that students think beyond their everyday experiences. We teach a curriculum that is rich in knowledge, and is broad and balanced.
2. Essential knowledge
Our ambitious curriculum approach combined with a regular review of its offer ensures that the futures of all students attending Dawlish College are not restricted by the curriculum. Our curriculum aims to increase students’ essential knowledge, creating opportunities for our students to choose how they participate in further study and/or employment, or by allowing them to participate in wider social, cultural, and political conversations of society.
3. Reading and Literacy
While we believe that reading is an essential part of any child’s education, students just being able to read it is not enough.
At school, students read regularly to develop fluency and familiarity with literature of all kinds. Students who read regularly are more likely to appreciate knowledge for its own sake and are in a better position to become lifelong learners. This in turn increases their future study and employment prospects, to shape or change how they participate in the world. And so we promote disciplinary literacy; that is, reading and literacy in all subjects – not simply English. Consequently, our students become fluent in the language and vocabulary of all the subjects they study in school.
Our curriculum is designed to be ambitious, broad, balanced, and challenging, yet supportive and individualised through scaffolding and chunked lessons. We believe in equality of opportunity. Our academic curriculum gives all learners, especially those with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disability) and from disadvantaged backgrounds, access to the deepest learning experience.
Our curriculum is viewed as a progressive five-year learning journey with a strong focus on the key concepts within subject disciplines. We build on our learners’ experiences at Primary School and their individual needs, ensuring equity and equality of opportunity so that all can enjoy a successful transition to post-16.
Our subject teams of reflective specialist practitioners work collaboratively to plan and deliver schemes of learning that construct a clear and coherent subject-specific curriculum over five years. Our hope is to enable students to make links within and across topics. Our schemes intuitively builds our students’ knowledge, skills and understanding over time, incorporating regular, personalised, and formative assessments of their learning.
On a moral level, it is a curriculum that reflects our societal values of personal development, spirituality, economic well-being, healthy lifestyle, inclusivity, and democracy so that our students can live successful and happy lives in a culturally diverse modern world.
Our aim is that they leave us feeling confident, having grown intellectually, morally, creatively and emotionally during their time with us here at Dawlish College.