Our curriculum supports progression to post-16 education, apprenticeships and/or employment with training. This is in line with our school motto of: Enjoying today, preparing for tomorrow. Our curriculum also supports students who aspire to higher education, by providing a solid foundation of learning and progress at Key Stage 3 and 4, supporting their ambition and enabling them to access their next steps.

Our careers programme links with local and national businesses and students meet with a range of employers through our “Words for Work” programme and events such as Bradford Manufacturing Week and our Careers Fair. Our Careers Coordinator advises on careers provision across each key stage, in line with the Gatsby benchmarks. We continue to forge closer links with local post 16 providers and the Local Enterprise Partnership to ensure our students receive the best advice and guidance possible.

Our extra-curricular provision is designed to enrich students’ experience. This is in line with our holistic learning experience, which seeks to support the development of soft skills such as character, communication skills, team working, resilience and independence. We are continually developing our student leadership programme, seeking to develop confidence and other life skills.

• This programme includes: Head Girl and Head Boy; Prefects; Representatives on the Student Council; House Captains and Vice Captains; Values Champions; Mental Health Ambassadors and Anti-bullying Ambassadors. We value our student voice and the role they play as stakeholders within the school.

The school also continues to develop the Connected Curriculum in line with the Trust’s vision following three themes: Sport, the Arts, and Enterprise. This curriculum enables students to: attain additional knowledge, understanding and skills; adds to students’ cultural and social capital and further prepares them for their next steps.

Our curriculum is ambitious and accessible to all students regardless of their background, starting point, special educational need or disability (SEND). It is designed to be inclusive and provide a broad, rich, and deep learning experience for all of our students. It is flexible enough to be tailored to the needs of specific students who need additional support.

The curriculum promotes equality of opportunity and challenges discrimination with particular regard to the protected characteristics as outlined by the Equalities Act 2010. The ‘protected characteristics’ are: age (which is not applicable with regard to our students), disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion/belief, sex and sexual orientation.

Many children and young people who have special educational needs may also have a disability. The Equality Act 2010 defines disability as ‘… a physical or mental impairment which has a long term and substantial adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities’. This means that, where a child or young person has a disability, the way in which their needs are met will depend on the impact the disability has on their access to education. At One In A Million Free School, we are committed to supporting and developing our teachers so that they continue to develop their skills to make adaptations and reasonable adjustments to support students with SEND.

Curriculum mapping by Heads of Department, Heads of Faculty and Subject Leads creates schemes of learning which build and sequence knowledge, understanding and skills across each key stage. Careful planning provides meaningful opportunities for the development and mastery of core skills and key knowledge so that students are able to access the curriculum fully and successfully. Data Informed Practice is a key element of Teaching and Learning at One In A Million Free School. The learning and progress of our students across our curriculum is evaluated using formative and summative assessment. Marking and feedback is targeted and focused on celebrating learning and progress, whilst highlighting areas for improvement which are addressed through our STEP Marking (S = Summary of the work produced, T = Task to complete to secure further improvement, E = Engagement with this task from students and P = Progress acknowledged by teachers).

Impact data including, attainment and progress data, Learning Walk analysis, Work Scrutiny information and Student Voice, is collated, analysed and evaluated by the Senior Leadership Team and Curriculum Leaders to measure the success of curriculum intent and implementation, informing curriculum change and development over time.

Curriculum Road Maps and Curriculum Overviews are published on the school’s website, detailing what students are learning each term in each year group. The Curriculum Overview provides detail of what is being taught and learnt in lessons and how the knowledge, understanding and skills will be assessed. The Curriculum Road Maps provide a more visual approach that details the sequential learning journey across a year for each subject for our students.

Each student will be given a Knowledge Organiser for every unit/topic they study in each subject. The Knowledge Organiser summarises the key information for each unit/topic and is a useful revision resource. Each student will also receive a Progress Ladder for every unit/topic they study in most subjects. The Progress Ladder allows the teacher to highlight what each student’s strengths are (in other words, what they know and can remember) and what their areas for development are (or, what they don’t know or can’t remember…yet). Both of these documents will be glued into exercise books or found in student portfolios.

We believe that literacy is a gateway into the curriculum so time is given to decoding keywords, reading aloud pieces of carefully chosen subject text and asking questions about the text to comprehend the meaning. To support disciplinary literacy across the school, each subject will explicitly teach subject specific terminology in every lesson. Students will record keywords and key terms in subject glossaries inside their books. These keywords will be pre-taught in lessons before they are encountered.

The curriculum documents are designed to support communication with parents/carers. They provide information about what their child will be learning and studying. We encourage parents/carers to have meaningful conversations at home about what is being learnt at school and how students can progress.

Parents/carers are asked to support their child with their homework (as detailed in the Home School Agreement, found in the student planner), be it either online homework (Sparx Maths, Bedrock Learning) or written homework. Students can access free websites such as BBC Bitesize, Seneca etc. for revision purposes. In KS4 options, students will be given or have the opportunity to purchase a revision guide.