At East Leake Academy we aim for our students to leave us as confident, independent young adults, ready to pursue their ambitions and enjoy the next stage of their life journey. We empower students to develop their character and value learning in its broadest sense, to gain the powerful knowledge that will help them debate, form opinions, and remain curious throughout their adult lives. Gaining qualifications, whilst important, is only one part of the education students receive at East Leake Academy.
Our curriculum extends beyond lessons as we support student learning in extra-curricular opportunities, clubs, trips and much more. Respect and care are modelled in every interaction, as students live by our academy values.
Curriculum aims
Our curriculum aims are for all our students to be:
- Knowledge-rich, independent learners with the breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding to be empowered in the pursuit of their future pathways
- Kind and confident individuals who care for others and demonstrate strength of character through self-respect and respect for others
- Aspiring young people who benefit from a broad and ambitious curriculum that offers a wide range of experiences that improve their lives now and in the future
Knowledge-rich, independent learners
Our academy benefits from a wealth of subject specialist expertise across a broad curriculum. Teachers with excellent subject knowledge and engaging approaches to pedagogy work collaboratively to design individual subject curriculums. Our curriculum builds on cultural capital through choices that expose students to a large variety of subject areas; promotes character-building qualities that lead to creating well-rounded, global citizens and provides our students with recognised and meaningful qualifications that will open up doors to paths in later life. Subject curricula is carefully sequenced to ensure students understanding is deepened and students know and remember more. Learning sequences allow students gain a meaningful understanding of depth of each subject. Teachers place emphasis on students linking prior knowledge to new learning and applying knowledge in a variety of contexts. Students are taught to independent thinkers through being metacognitively aware and consider how to self-regulate their learning.
Our broad and balanced curriculum teaches a wide range of subjects and topics, promoting a broad range of knowledge, skills and understanding thus allowing our students to discover and pursue their own particular interests and passions.
At key stage 3 students have meaningful exposure to creative arts, a modern foreign language, a full range of technology subjects, two humanities subjects, computing, personal development and ethics. These complement the core subjects of English, maths, science and PE.
At key stage 4 all students pursue GCSEs in English, maths, science and either history or geography. Students are then able to choose three options across a range of qualifications. These qualifications typically include GCSEs in art, business, computer science, drama, German, geography (in addition to history), French, food and nutrition, sport and DT. BTECs in music and sport studies. Cambridge Nationals in engineering.
At key stage 5, a wide range of A level subjects and level 3 qualifications are offered. The flexibility for a degree of specialism at key stage 5 allows students to further their interests and lays the platform for their future career pathways.
Our curriculum is fully inclusive for all students, and we strive to ensure that all our student’s needs are met. An awareness of each student’s prior learning and individual needs leads to an ambitious curriculum for all.
More information on this can be found in our SEND section and our SEND and single equality policies. Built-in across our curriculum are intelligent assessments that inform precision teaching.
Kind and confident individuals
Embedded within the curriculum is the opportunity for students to experience and develop personally. Students’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural awareness is threaded through our curriculum, with the added benefit of enrichment and extra-curricular activities on offer.
An example of personal development through the curriculum includes pastoral PDL time that takes place each day for 20 minutes. Across key stage 3, students take part in personal development and ethics lessons where cross-curricular thinking about society, diversity, RSE, RE and the modern world is cultivated, giving students the opportunity to think independently and reflect on their own values, opinions and development.
Aspiring young people to go beyond the curriculum
Our enrichment activities are broad and complement the timetabled curricular provision. Enrichment can be either extra-curricular or super-curricular.
Extra-curricular activities are things that students do in addition to their academic courses. They include recreational clubs, trips and residentials, as well as student leadership, community action and charity fund-raising opportunities. Students also have the opportunity to undertake the Duke of Edinburgh award.
Super-curricular activities take students’ academic study to a higher level and encourage students to be curious and proactive learners. Super-curricular includes subject-focused clubs, trips and residentials, as well as extra study support in subject areas, workshops, external visitors and subject-specific opportunities such as competitions.
Through enrichments activities students are empowered to nurture curiosity, create friendships, make memories and broaden their horizons.
Reading at ELA
At East Leake Academy we are fully aware of the positive impact that reading has on students’ progress throughout all curriculum areas. Where students have a reading age in line or above their chronological age, their ability to engage fully in their learning and also access assessments and examinations is maximised.
Students in years 7, 8, 9 and 10 are regularly assessed on their reading ability and skills to enable appropriate interventions to be put in place. In recent years we have developed our reading intervention programme in year 7 and 8 to help students to develop their reading comprehension and phonics skills. We have also adapted the focus of reading lessons in English, to reflect a ‘reciprocal reading’ approach to ensure that both fluency and comprehension of increasingly complex texts are developed.
We have a whole school reading programme as part of the PDL curriculum. This daily lesson will enable students to listen to their tutor read a book over the course of a half term. A vast amount of research underpins the theory that hearing text read out loud by a competent reader, helps students to develop a more advanced vocabulary and verbal fluency. A full list of the reading books for each year group can be found in the literacy section of the academy website.
Further information
To find out more about our curriculum please view our curriculum by year page.
Our curriculum information is updated intermittently throughout the year and information presented here may not be the most up-to-date. If you have any queries about the curriculum, please contact Miss J Paxton, Assistant Principal – jpaxton@eastleake-ac.org.uk
East Leake Academy curriculum policy can be found here.
