Our approach to learning

The curriculum at Shenley Academy has been developed to teach students the most powerful knowledge in each subject area. Alongside teaching of the academic curriculum, we support the character development of all students through a carefully crafted PSHCE programme. The skills and knowledge gained through the academic and character development curriculum is essential to enable students to function and contribute to society.

We believe that the choices we make about the content we provide and the order we present it are crucially important. They make a huge difference to how students are able to develop effective schema and retain and recall knowledge and skills in long-term memory.

We have high expectations of what the students at Shenley Academy can achieve. In order to broaden their horizons, the most powerful substantive and disciplinary knowledge is carefully selected to ensure that the curriculum is ambitious. The curriculum at Shenley Academy promotes life-long learning and provides the cultural capital that students will need to be successful in their learning as well as preparing them for their next steps and developing their role as good citizens.

The knowledge is sequenced to enable students to build on prior knowledge and encourages the students to be curious about their learning and make connections within each subject and across other subjects. We actively promote knowledge transference from short term to long-term memory through the use of regular retrieval practise.

We believe every student should have access to the same breadth of curriculum. Carefully selected scaffolding is used in order for all students to reach equally challenging learning goals and ensure our curriculum is inclusive.

At Shenley Academy, we believe in challenge for all. Embedded within the curriculum are opportunities for students to deepen their understanding. These activities provide the opportunity for students to think more extensively or consider different applications of the substantive and disciplinary knowledge to which they have been introduced.

Assessment opportunities are carefully planned so that they are purposeful and support learning. Information from assessment supports our evaluation of the effectiveness of our curriculum content and implementation.