Curriculum Overview

Curriculum Intent

At Serlby Park our overarching intent is to empower every student – irrespective of background or circumstance – with the skills, qualities, cultural capital and crucially the qualifications needed to successfully transition to the next stage in their learning or training journey. 

We are passionate about our desire to provide students with the cultural capital needed to understand the modern world and to play an active and productive role within it. We strive to ensure that all aspects of our curriculum are intrinsically linked to ‘real’ aspects of their local community, so that the knowledge and skills learnt in the classroom have a tangible connection to the world they experience. This includes a multitude of off-site visits, talks and workshops from local organisations and specific connections made through the classroom experience. 

Our curriculum:

  • is sequenced to enable pupils to build their knowledge and skills over time
  • provides deep, sustained and valuable learning for all pupils, including those with SEND
  • provides opportunities to develop levels of literacy and numeracy across all curricular areas
  • promotes opportunities across the curriculum for the development of good student health and well being
  • recognises the importance of digital literacy and provides opportunities for the development of the skills pupils need to function safely and responsibly in a technological world
  • provides a range of academic, technical and vocational courses which challenge, engage and motivate pupils
  • develops cultural capital across a wide range of contexts and experiences
  • ensures that all pupils make good progress irrespective of their starting point and those young people facing disadvantage are lifted from educational poverty.

We recognise that to provide our young people with rich learning experiences in a range of contexts it is crucial to work in partnerships with others. Expertise often lies beyond the school and learning opportunities are regularly planned with partner organisations including, statutory and voluntary organisations as well as employers and charitable organisations.

Curriculum Impact

The impact of our curriculum is that students leave with the skills, personal qualities and academic qualifications needed to play a positive, productive role within their local community and the world beyond.

At Serlby Park Academy, we are helping to change the community we serve and the life chances of the students in it.  All our students, including those deemed disadvantaged or with a SEND need can compete with privileged students from the most advantaged communities.  

Our literacy and oracy program is designed to ensure that all learners are equipped to understand the world around them, and have the skills needed to express their views and make an argument.  We are keen to develop their love of reading and help them to use a broader vocabulary, which will allow them to diminish any social disadvantage.   We want all our learners to leave with the confidence to express their views in an empathetic, tolerant, and respectful way.

Our aim is that all students, regardless of who they are or where they are from, leave Serlby Park able to clamber into the practices and discourse of the educated, and share the power of the powerful.

Through our empowering curriculum, our aim is to develop young people who:

  • will find the joy in academia
  • have the knowledge and confidence to investigate, interrogate, seek patterns and solve problems
  • are given the capacity to develop empathy and understanding through wide exposure to different time periods, geographical locations, cultures, religions and experiences that diverge from their own
  • are allowed the capacity to understand local, national and global issues and to influence these wider discussions through the channels open to the empowered
  • achieve equality of access to the practices, pursuits, debates and discussions of the educated
  • Receive the knowledge and confidence to make decisions that impact their own direction and navigate a chosen path with confidence.