Curriculum Overview
This page explains our curriculum intent and provides an overview of the curriculum at Harris Academy Peckham.
Subject-specific knowledge and skills are taught in-depth to ensure a mastery approach, allowing students to develop into, for example, Mathematicians, Geographers, Historians, Artists and Musicians.
Students are challenged by our ambitious curriculum which prepares them for the next stage of their education after GCSEs. Students experience a clear progression of delivered knowledge in their subject areas that intertwines within the variety of subjects studied both at KS3 and KS4.
Background knowledge is prioritised in our both our curriculum planning and delivery to ensure that regardless of each student’s starting point, they are able to succeed.
Intent
Mastery
All students, regardless of starting point deserve the right to become masters in their chosen field. At Harris Academy Peckham our broad and knowledge-rich curriculum allows all students to become Geographers, Linguists, Artists, Coders, Laureates, Historians, Actors, Musicians and scholars, but most importantly the curriculum encourages them to become masters of their own learning, providing them with the options to choose their pathway beyond the gates of Harris Academy Peckham.
Our broad curriculum at KS3 and then reactive KS4 option pathway ensures every student’s potential is nurtured and through specific careers and post-16 advice they are able to choose the best route for KS4 and beyond.
Lifelong independent learners
Our curriculum aims to enrich students and create a love of learning and thirst for knowledge. Through our personal development curriculum, students are equipped with the knowledge and skills to be able to independently enhance their learning outside of the classroom, utilising the internet, our library and amenities within the local community.
The wider enrichment programme within and outside of the Academy links with universities, workplaces and other educational enhancement opportunities, providing students with further skills to become more independent and find enjoyment and fulfilment in all learning opportunities as they progress into early adulthood and beyond.
Critical thinking and communication skills
In subject lessons, and through the personal development curriculum, students are encouraged to problem solve and develop their analytical, synthesis and evaluation skills. Students are rewarded for questioning information and expressing ideas formally, clearly and objectively. Oracy is a key focus to ensure students become confident and coherent communicators.
The enrichment on offer also enhances these skills and provides a platform for students to excel in a communication driven world. LEAP days provide a further platform for students to develop their critical thinking and communication skills. The real world social, personal and professional benefits of clear communication, and the importance of questioning information and its sources, are made to clear to students to support them on their journey beyond the Academy.
Literacy and numeracy are at the core
We recognise that these two areas are fundamental in the progression of student learning across all subject areas. Our WORD (writing, oracy and reading development) initiative ensures that students regularly undertake extended writing in lessons, there are regularly planned activities in all lessons to develop student oracy, explicit vocabulary is taught, revisited and regularly applied and that the teaching of key reading skills are prioritised in all subject areas through a disciplinary lens.
The Big Read in tutor time aims to promote a love of reading and enjoyment of fiction, realising the positive impact that reading for pleasure has on wellbeing and outcomes in adulthood. Numeracy skills are prioritised with an appropriate disciplinary focus across the curriculum to ensure students can master subject specific knowledge. Through personal development we ensure students are financially capable and aware to prepare them for life beyond Harris Academy Peckham.
World-ready global citizens
Our curriculum encompasses all aspects of SMSC and British values to ensure students have the understanding and ability to stay safe in the world and leave a positive footprint within their local community, country and the world. Lessons prepare students to be tolerant and respectful of all views and respond appropriately in situations where information may challenge personal beliefs.
Our incredible multi-cultural community at Harris Academy Peckham offers our students to the unique opportunity to learn from other students and staff from a variety of cultures and backgrounds. Students are given the opportunities to experience learning outside of the classroom, as well as take part in community projects. The local context of the Academy is embedded into the curriculum to ensure that students are world ready and understand and embrace their own context within the local community and London.
Our ethos of Leadership, Enquiry, Aspiration and Perseverance and our LEAP days provide our students with the foundations, knowledge and skills to fully immerse themselves across all areas of the globe when they leave us for post-16 education and beyond.
If you have any questions regarding our curriculum please email enquiries@harrispeckham.org.uk.
Implementation
Harris Academy Peckham’s intent and the implementation of our curriculum are intrinsically linked. Harris Academy Peckham serves a diverse community and we therefore do not believe in pre-determined curriculum pathways that can limit a student’s choice based on their ability, characteristics or background.
Our curriculum option choices at KS4 and the wider careers programme therefore equip our students with the information and knowledge to make informed decisions about their curriculum entitlement and choices beyond school. All students, regardless of their starting point, are provided with the support to understand the curriculum information needed to make the best choices.
Great teaching pedagogy and therefore pedagogical content experts delivering every lesson, lie at the heart of our curriculum implementation. One of the Harris Federation’s core values is to collaborate purposefully for continuous improvement. We prioritise both collaboration with Federation experts and also collaboration within and between our teams to ensure all students at Harris Academy Peckham benefit from the highest quality teaching, and leave us with the most powerful knowledge required to be successful beyond the Academy gates. Our focus on harnessing a passion for pedagogy and content expertise enables us to design personalised professional pathways for all staff to ensure our curriculum and high quality teaching practices have a positive impact on each and every student.
We firmly believe that social mobility should not be a possibility but rather an opportunity afforded to all. We know that education and therefore our curriculum has the potential to be the greatest leveller in our context. Our design, implementation and review systems are a conscious and crafted structure to guarantee the positive impact on each of our student’s future outcomes, regardless of their background.
Curriculum design and sequencing
To ensure that our curriculum affords every student the opportunity of social mobility and enjoyment, our curriculum has been collaboratively curated with specialists across the federation, carefully designed by subject experts and developed pedagogically over time following a rigorous implementation and review cycle.
Our content and pedagogical expert leaders have designed their curriculum according to the following 6 principles:
- Our curriculum is ambitious, offering an immersion in the most powerful knowledge of each subject.
- Our curriculum is sequenced so that new knowledge is rooted in background knowledge, and students become increasingly fluent over time using a spiral structure.
- Our curriculum is specified in detail so that teachers and students are clear what needs to be learned.
- Our curriculum is taught to be remembered not merely encountered
- Our curriculum is supported with a disciplinary literacy strategy that supports increased vocabulary acquisition as well as disciplinary reading and writing fluency.
- Senior and Middle Leaders have the skills and knowledge to design, implement and review
KS3 curriculum
Harris Academy Peckham KS3 students study a broad, balanced, diverse and knowledge-rich curriculum that not only prepares them well for public examinations and future learning, but also ensures they master their communication capabilities in order to become life-long learners who are happy and successful in all their chosen future endeavours.
Students in years 7 to 9 study the full National Curriculum, which has been interpreted, designed and sequenced by subject experts to prepare students for their next steps. In addition to the national curriculum we have chosen to prioritise subjects such as Music and Drama to meet the needs of the diverse population that we serve. We recognise the contribution these subjects can make to language development, communication, empathy, emotional intelligence, personal development and mental health and wellbeing. We ensure all our students are able to learn a musical instrument and participate in wider creative enrichments. We know that it is curriculum choices such as this that ensure our context of students are not limited by their starting points and can use their broad and rich knowledge to progress confidently into their future.
Details of the curriculum for each subject can be viewed on our Subjects page, but a summary of the subjects all students attend includes:
- English (Language and Literature)
- Mathematics
- Combined Science
- Art and Design Technology
- Computer Science
- Drama
- Languages (French, Spanish and Chinese)
- Geography
- History
- Music
- Physical Education
- Religious Studies
- Personal Development - Careers education, Personal, Social, Health and Economics education (PSHE) and Sex and Relationships education (SRE)
- Socially and culturally significant events through our awareness calendar and LEAP Days (Black History Months, LGBTQ History Month, International Women’s Day)
KS4 curriculum
Each year, students go into KS4 with the option of studying a varied, personalised, ambitious and knowledge-rich curriculum. Students are guided to make the best choices for them through a staged options process which includes support from subject specialists, careers advisors and the pastoral team, with support given to parents/ carers and our students to ensure their choices prepare them for their own future.
The KS4 curriculum is filled with ambitious qualifications that match our drive to ensure social mobility is not just a possibility but an option for every student as they progress into their chosen post-16 study and beyond.
Details of the curriculum for each subject can be viewed on our Subjects page, but a summary of the subjects available to KS4 students is outlined below.
Year 10
- GCSE English Language
- GCSE English Literature
- GCSE Maths
- GCSE Combined Science
- GCSE Triple Science
- GCSE Art
- GCSE Computer Science
- GCSE Drama
- GCSE Geography
- GCSE History
- GCSE Music
- GCSE Religious Studies
- BTEC Enterprise
- BTEC Travel and Tourism
- BTEC Sport
- BTEC Digital Information Technology
- BTEC Music
Year 11
- GCSE English Language
- GCSE English Literature
- GCSE Maths
- GCSE Combined Science
- GCSE Triple Science
- GCSE Art
- GCSE Computer Science
- GCSE Drama
- GCSE Geography
- GCSE History
- GCSE Music
- GCSE Religious Studies
- BTEC Enterprise
- BTEC Travel and Tourism
- BTEC Sport
- BTEC Digital Information Technology
- BTEC Music
In addition to their GCSE and vocational qualifications, all students at KS4 also attend lessons and assemblies in the following disciplines to supplement and enrich their education:
- Careers education
- Personal, Social, Health and Economics education (PSHE)
- Sex and Relationships education (SRE)
- Physical Education (Core PE)
- Socially and culturally significant events through our awareness calendar and LEAP Days (Black History Months, LGBTQ History Month, International Women’s Day)
Our wider curriculum
We know that ‘curriculum’ is not just a sequence of subjects and a timetable. We know that engagement in an ‘extra curriculum’ is vital to securing positive life chances for all our students. Extra-curricular opportunities are both timetabled and encouraged at every stage of a student’s journey at Harris Academy Peckham through our co-curricular timetable of events, Harris Experience, The Duke of Edinburgh Award, Jack Petchey immersion events, Sports Teams, our MISST curriculum, Music and drama ensembles, The Peckham 10 and all other events that provide our students with a platform for deeper success when they leave us.
We also prioritise vocabulary acquisition both within the subject curriculum we offer and beyond, realising that the student population we serve require additional support in this area to enable a better understanding of knowledge, concepts and ideas. We prioritise acquisition and application. We do this by expanding their cultural capital, exposing them to a variety of texts both fiction and non-fiction, providing a wide range of creative arts and our thoughtfully-planned learning within our extra curriculum.
The Peckham 10 was designed and sequenced to complement the subject-based curriculum that our students are immersed in. This extra curriculum has been curated as a bespoke offer that matches the needs of our community, to ensure that regardless of background, demographic or starting point, our students are provided with the cultural capital and background knowledge to access the curriculum and the wider society in which they live. Details of The Peckham 10 can be found HERE.
Ongoing curriculum implementation review
In service of our community, the senior leadership team work throughout the year with subject team leaders to review and evaluate the design, sequencing, pedagogical implementation and impact of our ambitious curriculum.
We review curriculum in numerous ways:
- Curriculum Implementation Meetings (CIM): weekly sessions where subject experts review, discuss and plan implementation practices, led by content pedagogical experts and team leaders.
- Curriculum Conversations: In regular line management meetings leaders delve into the implementation of each subject’s curriculum intent
- Curriculum Reviews: Throughout the year senior leaders will review how the curriculum is enacted, considering both implementation and impact evidence and use this information to inform curricular thinking and changes.
