Pendle Vale is serious about learning.
Our curriculum contributes to the development of all students at Pendle Vale College through our unrelenting focus on:
Currency: we deliver lessons and courses that equip students with the knowledge, skills, understanding and qualifications that enable them to successfully access further education, employment and training post-16. This is built upon quality first teaching, robust assessment and accountability, and well designed learning schemes.
Core skills: we develop essential life skills in students including literacy (including digital literacy), numeracy, oracy, leadership, and personal development. These skills will enable students to access high value qualifications; develop their personal and employability characteristics; and know how to keep themselves safe and healthy.
Character: we develop cultural capital in students through a series of deliberate and planned opportunities that including but not limited to: My Personal Best in PE; Prince’s trust; Social action and charity work; outdoor learning and residential activities; the Pendle Vale 50 and Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme
Our curriculum contributes to the development of students at Pendle Vale through their development in five key areas:
Social development is encouraged through collaborative learning across the curriculum including practical, group and team work in many subjects.
Moral development of students is promoted through the effective teaching of personal development as well as explicit teaching of ethics and conflicts across the curriculum including, but not limited to Science, Religious Studies, History and Geography.
Spiritual development is highlighted when providing students with the opportunity to reflect upon their obligation as educated citizens as well as explicit education related to major faiths and belief systems, so that they can use this knowledge to better understand and support the lives of others.
Cultural development is supported by exposing students to different cultural beliefs as well as developing their own cultural capital, addressing misconceptions, breaking down barriers and removing glass ceilings on student ambition.
Personal development is explicitly taught so that students know how to keep themselves safe in all aspects of their life and how to develop safe and healthy relationships in the future. It is addressed through deliberate and planned activities embedded within the curriculum that enhances students experience and appreciation of their environment; their sense of value and self-worth and their skills and potential.
We seek to instill a true love of learning in all our students by:
- Promoting a love of learning through effort based praise;
- Developing secure classroom environments where failure is accepted and embraced as an essential part of learning;
- Providing a curriculum that offers appropriate choice to students to develop their academic and personal interests and pursuits.
In order to achieve a true understanding of each subject, topics have been intelligently sequenced based on the following rationale:
- Students gain access to a broad and balanced curriculum upon entry in Y7;
- Subject areas teach the fundamental knowledge, skills and understanding in line with the national curriculum that will develop competency, fluency and passion;
- Curriuclum areas choose the most powerful topics and modules to make learning relevant to students and use these to add breadth as well as depth to understanding.
Our intent is that by the end of Year 11 students at Pendle Vale College will:
- Have substantive, disciplinary, and procedural knowledge across a variety of different subjects;
- Be able to use skills to analyse, interpret, develop explanations, evaluate, and make judgements which can be transferred to wider aspects of life and further careers;
- Have the opportunity of choice regarding further education, employment or training.
The curriculum at Pendle Vale is influenced by research and evidence-based practice, including:
- Powerful knowledge (Michael Young, 2014) – teaching that which is typically abstract or rarefied, and will not be picked up by students from their everyday life and that therefore requires expert teaching. This knowledge will open opportunities to students including the access to further, deeper knowledge. It’s ambitious, empowering, and beautiful.
- Future 3 (Michael Young, 2014) – all subjects posses a cannon of knowledge as defined by the subject community that is an entitlement and is taught to all students, regardless of their background. Each encompasses a broad range of knowledge forms including declarative, procedural and experiential. it is our duty to teach it and to teach it well.
- Principles of instruction (Barak Rosenshine, 2010) – over time, our teaching reviews learning and checks understanding; presents new learning using models and scaffolds; guides practice, secures high success rates and develops independence in students.
- Cultural literacy and capital (Ed Hirsch 1987) – our curriculum develops knowledge not only essential for understanding of the examined specifications, but also essential to the understanding of the rich and varied world that our students inhabit and the cultural and social influences that shape this.
- The work and research of the Education Endowment Foundation is routinely used in identifying high value strategies to further drive school improvement and sound implementation.
Healthy debate regarding traditional and progressive methods in education, recognising the value of both but understanding the vital role of teachers and other adults as experts in their field is commonplace at Pendle Vale.
Our curriculum ensures that any potential equality issues are mitigated by:
- Providing additional support for literacy and numeracy through additional staffing and learning mentors and providing additional sessions including Study Saturday;
- Showcasing role models who are of different socio-economic, cultural, ethnic and gender backgrounds;
- Providing knowledge organisers for all students;
- Providing the opportunity to purchase exam board revision guides which cover the GCSE modules we study and to access these for free via our revision library;
Our belief is that homework should be a deliberate practice of what has been modelled and taught in lessons, as well as spaced revision to ensure students are developing high level skills alongside powerful knowledge.
Opportunities are built in to make links to the world of work to enhance the careers, advice and guidance that students are exposed to including:
- Subject visits to local history, heritage and sites of interest;
- Talks to students regarding career paths which could be taken, and our own route into our careers;
- A fully integrated approach to careers including work experience and independent careers advice;
- Speakers from different universities, providers and professions;
Whilst ensuring students are well prepared for their GCSE examinations, we teach beyond the exam specification by:
- Ensuring that the KS3 curriculum simultaneously develops broad and in-depth study of the subjects in a timely fashion;
- Providing important context which underpins the GCSE topics so that students gain a framework on which to learn from;
- Providing a curriculum with a formal commitment to character through extra-curricular opportunities.
In the event of remote education being required, or for students who are unable to attend school, we offer GCSEpod, SAMLearning, Sparx maths, and Languagenut to support their continued progress.
Students attend Pendle Vale for 32.5 hour per week
