Curriculum
Our mission is to provide an excellent whole-person education through which all are challenged to grow in wisdom, understanding, self-esteem and closeness to God.
St Mary’s believes that all students are capable of being successful learners. We strive for excellence within our curriculum to enhance pupils’ life choices. Our curriculum remains true to its Christian roots, prioritising the development of the whole child as part of an education for wisdom. Our intention is for our young people to become confident, independent and enquiring students who develop a life-long love of learning.
We believe that a high-quality curriculum is broad, balanced and ambitious. Our ambitious curriculum promotes intellectual, moral, spiritual, aesthetic, creative, emotional and physical development covering a broad range of subjects and experiences. Teachers use their professional expertise and experience to set high expectations and challenge whilst ensuring curriculum content is in the zone of proximal development for pupils. Teaching of the curriculum is based on evidence-based approaches to learning using the expertise of the Blackpool research school, based at St Mary’s, to develop our thinking.
Our curriculum is vertically integrated and focuses on the big ideas and concepts that underpin learning. This ensures students have relevant prior knowledge before progressing to new content. At St Mary’s we have thought long and hard about our curriculum sequence within each subject area including key conceptual frameworks, models, laws and common misconceptions. Departments regularly evaluate their curriculum through our DAFITAL process using data and collaborative discussion to inform changes and improvements.