About Our Curriculum

Curriculum Intention

At Lytham St Annes High School, the curriculum is the key tool in ensuring that we

Create a true learning community in pursuit of excellence, we will ensure that those affected by disadvantage share fully in the school’s success, both in and out of the classroom

We see the curriculum as being so much more than the content that is covered in lessons. It is the culture of our school, it is the experiences that allow context to be added to new learning. It provides the relevance that makes subjects interesting, exciting and truly worthwhile. It is the skills, behaviours and knowledge combined in such a way that our students can access the world around them with confidence.

The school values the skills and specific knowledge of our Subject Leaders, who work together to ensure that every area of school links seamlessly to create overall excellence for students, irrespective of their starting point. Standards and expectations are high and subjects ensure that their teaching is aspirational for every student through sequenced learning, high-quality dialogue and planned instruction.

Our curriculum is the lever by which we are reversing an area-wide issue of underperformance for disadvantaged students, with consistently ambitious expectations for everyone. In lessons, high-quality literacy teaching develops a love of language that enables students to express knowledge, thoughts and feelings. Our curriculum is unrelenting in connecting subjects through our improvement of speaking, reading and writing.

Experience in Key Stage 3, whilst building knowledge, will develop a love and interest in all areas of school life. To develop learners holistically all students will have a chance to study a broad range of disciplines, building subject-specific foundations securely whilst mastering the core areas of English, Maths and Science. We aim to give students the knowledge, experience and understanding to then delve deeper and inquire independently. Our extracurricular provision and More Than Grades commitment will show this at both individual and group level, with Key Stage 3 being one of genuine exploration, experience and development. It will be a year where a growing academic maturity is fed through depth and application.

“Powerful Knowledge” is critical to gain a full appreciation of a subject and it must be grown and nurtured intelligently through the general understanding of how students learn, develop and influence the world around us. Each area of the curriculum will value strategies to ensure fluency through secure knowledge retention and application, matched with a whole school understanding of unconditional positive regard. Conceptual knowledge and rich connections across the school will allow the stories in each subject to be told, deepening learning and enabling inquiry. Simple but effective speaking, reading and writing strategies will be applied relentlessly for the benefit of all students.

Our pastoral curriculum is interwoven with our academic provision. Routines, expectations and order will allow all students to benefit from high quality pedagogy. The school ensures alignment between both pastoral and curriculum through the use of LIFE lessons, form time and school themes. Alongside these, a fully inclusive and nurturing provision is able to support our most needy and vulnerable through academic and social intervention i.e. the basic scaffolding needed to access the subject knowledge and opportunity.

Teaching strategies are driven by student needs and they ensure that any student unable to access their work develops the skills to do so. A whole-school expectation on the way we support students ensures their psychological safety in which to flourish and enjoy the skills and knowledge needed.

Our Values in Our Curriculum

Aspiration: We are proudly ambitious for each and every students in each and every area.

At LSA we support all students to access the richest, broadest concepts and we expect all students to be the best that they can be. Our Curriculum Leaders plan learning sequentially and with purpose so that learners are able to think as individuals.

Endeavour: Through a growth mindset, our formative procedures will ensure all students try hard, understand failure in a safe and supportive environment in order to ultimately achieve.

At LSA we try to understand how the brain works so that adults ensure our students are taught in ways that are proven to succeed. We work hard.

Integrity: There are no shortcuts. Our curriculum has depth and breadth, and all subjects understand their wider responsibility to give strong contextual knowledge and understanding.

At LSA we know results are important to students in the world of employment, but we also know that success in exams is dependent on subject-specific knowledge and skills. i.e. no shortcuts.

Respect: Through manners, wellbeing and the ability to process information, our school will value respect. Respect in school and respect within our wider community.

At LSA cultural capital and academic expectations meet to ensure students are well mannered, polite and able to operate in new and unknown arenas making informed choices.

Powerful Knowledge

Michael Young, a British sociologist of education contends that the main purpose of schools is to teach knowledge that enables students to understand and think beyond the limits of their own experience, and describes this knowledge as powerful. In one of his early papers on the subject he writes:

Powerful knowledge refers to what the knowledge can do or what intellectual power it gives to those who have access to it. Powerful knowledge provides more reliable explanations and new ways of thinking about the world and… can provide learners with a language for engaging in political, moral, and other kinds of debates” (Young, 2008)

Young has also explained powerful knowledge as providing the best understanding of the natural and social worlds that we have and helping us go beyond our individual experiences. Knowledge is ‘powerful’ if it predicts if it explains if it enables you to envisage alternatives.

Powerful knowledge sets our students up to learn, succeed and contribute.

Teaching & Learning Policies