Curriculum

Hamwic Education Trust schools follow the National Curriculum (2014) and the Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage (April 2017) which sets out the substance of what is taught and learned. Alongside this curriculum, our schools enrich pupils’ experiences in unique ways, relevant to local communities and the world in which our young people will live. Find out more about our teaching & learning.

When designing the curriculum, our schools are committed to providing an inclusive curriculum that meets the needs of all pupils, regardless of background, sexual orientation, gender, faith, race, ability and disability, in line with the protected characteristics.

Our schools promote pupils’ cultural capital in a range of unique ways through wider experiences and opportunities. Schools design their curriculum with the following guiding principles:

The most valuable knowledge and ideas in each subject are clearly identified, building from foundational to specialised knowledge and revisiting concepts in increasingly complex ways
Learning is organised and sequenced in ways that develop strong retainable schemas and reduce misconceptions
Experiences are meaningful, leading to changes in pupils’ long-term memory, and helping them to think persistently and deeply
Teaching is underpinned by research-led pedagogy, connected to the subject discipline, which results in pupils knowing more and doing more
Assessment captures pupils’ accumulated knowledge over time, increasing the accuracy and timeliness of teacher response to pupil need.

Curriculum Principles

The three key principles behind Hamwic Education Trust’s Curriculum Frameworks are

Knowledge
Memory
Challenge

	Research Based Pedagogy At HET we work hard to stay up to date with the latest research and thinking around curriculum design. Our resources adopt pedagogical approaches that support all children to know more and remember more, utilising the latest theories around cognitive load and making knowledge stick! Lessons enable deep learning of subject content, concepts and components and all pupils are challenged to think hard. Children are exposed to new content through careful instruction and modelling followed by opportunity to practice and apply their learning independently.
	Well-Sequenced Threads Units of work are carefully sequenced so that the knowledge and skills associated with the various key concepts are gradually developed and regularly revisited. Connections to prior learning are identified and built upon. Threads in learning are carefully planned and highlighted in subject unit maps and curriculum plans.
	Conceptual Understanding We want our children to not only retain what we’ve taught them but relate it to other things they encounter, using each new situation to add nuance and sophistication to their thinking. Concepts need to be the driver for learning. Given that we cannot teach everything, Daniel Willingham argues that pupils should learn the concepts that come up again and again – ‘the unifying ideas of each discipline.’ We have identified the key concepts in the national curriculum for each subject and created concept maps for each one. Concepts provide the schema through which meaning is made and connections are formed.
	Progressive Learning All curriculum units of work are underpinned by a carefully sequenced knowledge and skills framework for each subject. These progression frameworks provide year group specific detail for the key concepts in each subject which builds on that from prior year groups.
	Key Knowledge and Skills In recent decades, advances in our understanding of the human brain have confirmed the need for a knowledge-based curriculum for two reasons. Firstly, knowledge frees up your brain’s capacity for thinking. Secondly, we learn new things by connecting them to old things. In the HET Frameworks, the knowledge for each lesson is divided into substantive and disciplinary knowledge and the approach to teaching each type of knowledge is quite specific.
	Challenge for All We are a challenge seeking species! Research shows that children who disengage with learning, rather than feeling the learning is too hard, they more often feel the learning is too easy. When the conditions are right, we love a challenge. In our curriculum frameworks, we plan for all children to be challenged to think deeply about the learning and we ensure they are provided with appropriate scaffold and support to access that deep thinking. Not only does this help to engage pupils, but it also helps to make the knowledge stick in long term memory.