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Curriculum

Our Curriculum Intent

The mission of St Augustine’s is best encompassed by our guiding statement of ‘love and serve through Christ’. Whilst academic success will always be a measure of our success, we aim to educate the whole child in order to fully prepare them for the next stage of their education, working life and to ensure they are responsible and reflective members of society. 

Alongside this commitment, our curriculum serves to embrace our local context – ensuring that all students are proud of their heritage, curious to learn and prepared for their futures.

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SAS Curriculum Logos

A Rich and Responsive Curriculum

Rich in breadth and ambition: Rich in knowledge and skills:
We offer a broad and ambitious curriculum across years 7-11, with students in our three year KS3 studying 13 different subjects – including Music, Computer Science and discrete Personal Development sessions. At KS4, we offer the full suite of EBacc subjects and seek to continue increasing the proportion of students undertaking this pathway. Alongside this academic core, our range of vocational and optional courses ensure that we offer a range of pathways and meet the needs of students within our local context. We are particularly proud of our Travel and Tourism offer given the heritage of our thriving sea-side town. We are committed to ensuring our curriculum enables students to build a depth of knowledge, skills and understanding progressively across all subject areas. Ambitious learning journeys in each subject area establish, in detail, the knowledge and skills that students will develop and build upon at each stage to ensure their greatest chance of successful progression to further education, apprenticeships and/or employment with training upon leaving St Augustine’s Catholic High School.
Through our timetabled Personal Development programme from Years 7-9, we ensure fundamental British values are at the heart of school life and that students develop into well-rounded young people who are able to listen to the views of others displaying respect and tolerance towards those whose opinions are different from their own. The curriculum aims in each area stretch beyond the scope of assessment objectives to ensure that students develop a love of learning beyond the classroom
We have high ambitions for the achievement of all our students. We ensure that no student has a barrier placed in front of them in regard to access of the curriculum based on their background or additional needs. All decisions relating to alternative curriculum pathways are made in conjunction with students and their parents. The rationale for any such decision will always be clear and communicated to all stakeholders and made in the best interests of the student and not based on school outcomes.
Rich in reading: Rich in opportunities:
We recognise that reading is the gateway to the curriculum and the development of students’ literacy skills sits at the heart of our approach. This includes our use of Accelerated Reader and Bedrock Learning to develop students’ reading and vocabulary skills, literacy ‘catch-up’ interventions and a range of disciplinary literacy approaches across subject areas. Our curriculum is enriched through a multitude of opportunities from Year 7 through to Year 11. These include: retreats, visits to places of worship, residentials, student choir, music ensembles and a range of sporting activities/teams. Residential trips include a ski trip and languages and technology trips. There are also opportunities for student leadership through involvement in the Student Council.
In addition, learning journeys across subjects identify the key Tier 2 and 3 vocabulary to be explicitly taught at each stage.
Responsive to our context:
As a Catholic School we ensure students have a deep understanding of their faith via RE lessons, Collective Worship and our CHRIST values. In addition, the RE curriculum covers other faiths at both Key Stages 3 and 4. To enrich this aspect of our curriculum further, we aim to offer Catholic retreats and pilgrimages and also visits to and from other faiths.
We are committed to ensuing our students voices are heard when designing and implementing our curriculum. We ensure this via Department Reviews, the quality assurance cycle, the School Council and student voice. For GCSE options our starting principle is to ensure the greatest number of students possible receive their first preferences and we retain the widest range of choice and breadth of subjects possible.
As a school, we are proud of our local heritage and our curriculum seeks out opportunities to celebrate this. This is coupled with our commitment to ensuring that we build students’ cultural capital and broaden their horizons to ensure that they go on to their next steps with confidence and conviction.

Personal Development

At St Augustine's we believe that the Personal Development of our students is one of the most important aspects of education. This incorporates our teaching of British Values and the 9 Protected Characteristics which you can find below.

Each half term have a specific focus and we will hold special assemblies, use tutor time, enrichment and bespoke lessons to focus on our Personal Development themes moving forward.
In a world where there is not justice for all we are proud to be helping our young people to understand this and be ambassadors for change.

Equality act 2010 protected characteristics
British Values poster St AUGS

Queries

If you have a specific query about any element of our school curriculum, please contact us using our form: Contact Us