Curriculum At a Glance
At Braywick Court School, we provide an ambitious, knowledge-rich curriculum anchored in high-leverage explicit instruction that ensures every child 'Learns, Enjoys, and Succeeds'. We define progress as knowing more and remembering more.
To achieve this, we have systematically identified the component knowledge and disciplinary skills required for mastery in each subject. This ensures that our pupils' learning is supported by a robust and accurate foundation of information.
Our school demographic is characterised by high aspirations; our pupils typically enter school having had rich early experiences and arrive motivated and eager to learn.
Through our close relationship with our families, we recognise that our curriculum must go beyond academic excellence to provide the specific personal attributes our pupils need to thrive in the modern world.
Our intent is to provide a curriculum that enables every pupil to:
- Think Big and Be Bold: We foster an atmosphere of high aspiration. We want our pupils to be bold in their goals, believing there is no limit to what they can achieve for themselves and their community.
- Develop Rich Schemas: We believe that knowledge is "sticky." By precisely sequencing the building blocks of learning and providing enriching experiences, we ensure pupils build robust mental models (schemas) that allow for deep understanding and long-term retention.
- Thrive and Succeed: We ensure every child reaches their full potential and beyond. By providing the specific ingredients for success: highly effective teaching, adaptive support, and targeted challenge, we encourage every child to flourish and be the best that they can be.
- Empower Positive Change: We nurture responsible global citizens who understand their role in society and are inspired to make a meaningful, positive impact on the world around them. We want our children to look beyond themselves and consider how they can make a meaningful impact, within our school, across our local community, and on the wider world.
While we teach every subject as its own distinct discipline, our curriculum is designed so that the habits of a good learner carry across from one subject to another. We don't expect these links to happen by accident; we build them into our curriculum.
This structure ensures all areas of the National Curriculum are not only covered but explored in depth. It allows pupils to move beyond surface-level facts and engage in sustained, meaningful inquiries. While some subjects are grouped under a termly focus to allow for immersive links, we protect the integrity of each subject. Pupils are taught to recognise when they are thinking like a scientist, an artist, or a historian, ensuring they develop the specific disciplinary skills required for each field.
To ensure consistency and high standards across our curriculum offer, every subject is built upon a foundation of ‘Core Pillars’. These pillars serve as a blueprint, ensuring that even as the topics change, the pedagogical approach and quality of teaching remains "The Braywick Way."
Each subject identifies specific pillars (e.g., the Five Pillars of Writing or the Five Pillars of Reading) that guide planning and delivery. These pillars allow staff to make intentional links across the curriculum. For example, the Oracy Pillar, rooted in the belief that "if a child cannot say it, they cannot write it", is a non-negotiable habit that transfers from a Writing lesson into a Reading discussion and into a History inquiry or a Science investigation.