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Bury CE High School

BURY CE HIGH SCHOOL
A Church of England Academy with the vision to empower all students to let their light shine.

Curriculum 

At Bury Church of England we believe in the transformative power of knowledge to fulfil the aspirations of all our students to ensure success beyond school life and to achieve our school vision of ‘let your light shine’. Our aspirational, bespoke curriculum looks to embed, yet go beyond, the national curriculum. To complement our knowledge rich curriculum, a fundamental aim of our pedagogical approach is to embed core knowledge in our student's long term memory and ensure effective schema building.

Alongside striving for the highest academic achievement for our students, we also have a significant emphasis within our curriculum on personal development, reading for pleasure and STEAM subjects. Our ambitious bespoke curriculum ensures all students gain the necessary experiences to compete academically, spiritually, morally and socially in the wider world. 

Curriculum booklet 

 

Curriculum vision

The vision for curriculum is that: 

  • Students will uphold strong Christian values, always striving to let their light shine  
  • Students will be responsible citizens who respect everybody in school, the wider community and beyond  
  • Students will be mentally and physically resilient  
  • Students will experience creativity and curiosity  
  • Students will experience a knowledge rich curriculum that is broad and balanced, deepens over time and exposes them to a wide variety of texts 

 

Curriculum principles

Our curriculum is designed around five core principles.  

The Bury Church curriculum: 

  • Exposes all learners to a well-sequenced curriculum focused on declarative and procedural knowledge within the subject discipline.  
  • Uses retrieval practice to strengthen learners' memory of the critical knowledge.  
  • Elicits deeper thinking, opportunities for practice and application of knowledge.  
  • Ensures that all learners experience high challenge and low threat.  
  • Ensures key vocabulary is identified and pre-taught. 

 

Spirituality in the curriculum

Our curriculum aims to develop responsible, respectful and active citizens who play a positive role in the local community. Through our curriculum we actively encourage students to develop an understanding of their moral and spiritual responsibility to reflect on and positively improve themselves, the school and the wider community. We want students to reflect wisely, learn with integrity and cooperate well with peers, staff and other people in the local community to make a positive change.

Within the curriculum students experience awe and wonder from studying Mount Everest in Geography, learning how to play the ukele in Music and reflecting on what it would be like to be the only person on a planet in Science.

The STEAM curriculum supports students to reflect on how their behaviours and the behaviours of their peers, the school and the local community maybe contributing to the problems that our planet faces. Students are guided to identify the issues and take positive steps to develop a more sustainable planet. 

Enrichment lessons focus on development of social action projects in the community. Students reflect on who they are and what it means to be a Bury Church student working together to contribute in a positive way to improving the lives of others. We aim for students to build a positive reputation for our school by empathising with others and working together to improve the lives of people in our local community.

We regularly celebrate our students through our Shine awards and half-termly celebratory events. We want our staff and students to know that we appreciate them and are thankful for what is good in life and these events enable us to achieve this.

Spirituality in the Curriculum Booklet 

 

Reading for pleasure

At Bury Church, we have developed a culture of reading for both our staff and students. We dedicate thirty minutes a day in our curriculum time for our students to read for pleasure with their form tutor. This shared experience promotes a wealth of rich discussions and promotes reading for pleasure for all our students.

 

Our comprehensive reading programme for each year group:

  • has links to our school values of ‘let your light shine’​.
  • has cultural significance​ for our students.
  • focuses on interesting subject matter.
  • includes a diverse selection of authors. ​
  • provides lexical challenge​.
  • is age appropriate​.
  • develops links across the entire curriculum.

 

Our reading curriculum entitles our students to: 

  • hear a range of diverse voices.
  • travel around the world and experience different cultures.​
  • explore morality and resilience in range of contexts​.
  • travel across time from 1818 to 2016.​
  • access highly regarded, culturally significant, award-winning texts.

 

 

Students also have a wide variety of books available to them in the library that they can access at break and lunch each day.

Curriculum logistics

Students have six lessons a day that are fifty minutes long. 

Key Stage 3 lessons

KS3 Subject Lessons per week
Maths 4
English 4
Science 3
Religious Education 2
Geography 2
History 2
French 2
Physical Education 2
Art 1
Music 1
Drama 1
Computing 1
STEAM 1
PSHE/Citizenship/Enrichment 2

Key Stage 4 lessons

Subject Lessons per week
Maths 4
English 4
Combined Science 5 (6 for Triple science)
Religious Education 3
Option subjects 3
Physical Education 2
PSHE/RSHE 1
Citizenship/Digital literacy/Careers 1
Core subject intervention 1

 

Options at KS4

For the first three years at Bury Church of England High school, all students study an ambitious, broad and balanced KS3 curriculum.

As students come towards the end of year 9, they need to make choices about the subjects they would like to study in year 10 and year 11. At our school, we support all students throughout year 9 to make informed decisions about their KS4 course choices ensuring the child is at the heart of the decision.

At KS4, all students will study:

  • English literature and language
  • Maths
  • Religious studies
  • Science
  • Core PE (not externally examined)
  • PSHCE (not externally examined)
  • Digital literacy and Enrichment (not externally examined)

Option subjects are as follows:

  • GCSE Geography AQA 8035 

  • GCSE History AQA 8145HG 

  • GCSE French EDEXCEL 1FR0 

  • GCSE Design & Technology EDUQAS C600U 

  • GCSE Food and Nutrition AQA 8585 

  • GCSE Fine Art AQA 8202 

  • GCSE Textiles AQA 8204 

  • GCSE Music EDUQAS C660QS 

  • GCSE Drama OCR J316 

  • GCSE Dance AQA 8236 (Currently being reviewed)

  • GCSE Physical Education AQA 8582 

  • CNAT Sports Studies OCR J813

  • CNAT Child Development OCR J809 

  • CNAT Health and Social Care OCR J835 

  • GCSE Media Studies EDUQAS C680QS

 

 

Curriculum subjects

Curriculum-Gallery (ID 1005)