INDEPENDENT SCHOOL
Curriculum
Our School curriculum links with our core values of achievement, belonging and compassion
Achievement
Students at Grow are on their unique and individualised pathways, they are aiming for highly personalised outcomes. Achievement looks different for each of them, and we value and celebrate every success, however big or small, every day. We don’t look for failings, we look for potential and opportunities.
Belonging
Feeling secure, safe and accepted as part of a supportive group is widely recognised as being fundamental to our wellbeing. At Grow, we aim for our students to feel safe, supported, able to take risks and be prepared to be wrong. We believe a strong sense of belonging is the key to cultivating curiosity, innovation and original thinking within our curriculum.
Compassion
Central to our curriculum is the importance we place on kindness. We aim to prepare students to enter the wider world with open hearts and a strong sense of self-worth, teaching the value of compassion and empathy towards ourselves as well as towards others.
Aims of the School Curriculum
- To promote academic, intellectual and creative achievement through well-planned and highly individualised curriculum pathways.
- To plan and deliver high-quality and well-sequenced learning experiences tailored to the individual needs of our students.
- To be designed in a way that places value on each student’s unique talents, skills and creative interests.
- To be designed in a way that seeks out each student’s potential and provides them with enough challenge to fully reach it.
- To cultivate creative, innovative and original thinking through a strong sense of belonging and community.
- To be purposeful in such a way that students have a strong understanding of the ‘why’ they are learning, not just the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ they are learning.
- To develop themes that link across several subjects where possible, and to do this in a way that reflects how learning opportunities present themselves in real-life.
- To support the development of young people who are compassionate, curious, self-aware, brave and who can contribute positively to the world beyond school.
- To prepare students to leave school with the confidence to thrive in an unpredictable and fast-changing world.
- To support pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
- To support pupils’ physical development and their understanding of how to live healthy lives, and to provide lots of opportunities for them to be active.
- To provide high-quality, specialist teaching in a range of academic subjects which ensures students have the relevant knowledge and qualifications to progress to the next part of their education.
- To provide impartial careers advice to ensure students are equipped to make informed decisions about their future job options.
- To make the journey through the curriculum enjoyable with plenty of opportunities for humour, fun and meaningful human connection.
Personalisation
Students who attend Grow Independent School have usually had limited opportunities to consider and explore their core motivations for learning. This is often due to not previously being able to consistently attend or engage with school.
Before we can personalise the curriculum for each student, it is important that we establish these motivations, talents, skills and interests; we refer to this as their ‘WHY’. Once we have a good understanding of this, we can then consider which branch they are mostly going to be working on, and which subject areas and topics are going to be most appropriate for them.
This leads to us planning the ‘WHAT’ which is the subject content that will be delivered, and the ‘HOW’ which is the most effective way of implementing the teaching of this content to suit the student, taking into account their specific learning needs. This is explained with the visual below:
Please spend some time looking through our curriculum policy.
If you have any questions relating to the curriculum please contact our curriculum lead, Liz Pickering on liz@growtuition.co.uk