At Ratton School we aim to provide a school curriculum planned to be as comprehensive as the National Curriculum, but also a curriculum that is also ambitious for, and relevant to, all our students. Our curriculum has been thoughtfully sequenced to enable all students, including the most disadvantaged, to make significant academic progress across their five years at Ratton School. Our curriculum is designed to support students to develop knowledge that will empower them to access the next stage of their education and successfully move into the world of work and to teach them the virtues that they will need to make good choices as citizens in a democratic society.  

We believe that our core purpose is to develop our young people to become confident, creative, and caring students who achieve excellence in everything they do. Our school curriculum is designed to reflect this. Our ambition is that through our core curriculum domain, our virtues of Compassion, Respect, Creativity, Teamwork, Effort and Responsibility are taught alongside powerful subject knowledge to support young people to be the very best they can be in all aspects of their lives and to prepare them for the next steps in their lifelong learning journey.

Lessons at Ratton school are planned and sequenced underpinned by an expertise in learning. We aim to work with students, parents/ carers to develop a shared understanding of how young people learn and this is reflected in sequences of lessons with a focus on lesson delivery though our adopted pedagogical method “the six principles of learning”. The six principles: Challenge, Explanation, Modelling, Deliberate Practice, Feedback and Questioning, are teaching techniques refined from evidence informed research, and we plan to use these techniques to support young people to think hard during their experiences in lessons and to help them to commit those experiences and new learning to long-term memory. 

During their learning journey through the years 7 to 11 curriculum it is important that the students know where they are and what they need to do to improve. We aim to achieve this through formative assessment and responsive teaching. Teachers will use Assessment for Learning strategies to gauge what students understand and adjust their planning to address any gaps in knowledge. Students will receive regular quality feedback from planned assessment in lessons to support them in taking the next steps to improve. In order to help parents/carers to support a young person’s learning we will formally report student progress to parents and carers several times across an academic year and parents and carers are invited to meet with subject teachers at least once in each academic year.

At Ratton School we believe that a quality curriculum is more than just what happens in lessons. Our pastoral programme supports young people to develop a better understanding of their personal development and our virtues as well as supporting academic progress. Our broad extra-curricular offer provides a wealth of opportunities for students to develop in areas of interest outside of the classroom.