Our curriculum is organised in such a way that it provides pupils with the opportunities to experience success in their learning in line with our ethos, mission and aim: To Engage, Educate, Empower and Enrich every young person that comes to our school.

Our pupils often arrive with a disjointed education. We aim to build on prior knowledge but also look to fill gaps in understanding to expand and ensure the growth and development of our pupil’s skills. To achieve this we work across key stages and have a cross curricular approach to learning.

Our curriculum provides pupils with opportunities to develop their social skills for learning and citizenship and offers a balance between core subjects and creative subjects to improve and develop levels of engagement and social skills as well as emotional and physical wellbeing. It is designed to prepare pupils for their onward educational journey and therefore aligns itself with mainstream subject offers.

We want our pupils to succeed and have opportunities to experience achievement. At KS3 and KS4 each discrete subject offers a variety of qualifications and accreditations which pupils can work together. We have high aspirations and expectations for our learners, believing that individual circumstances do not limit opportunities of attainment.

We believe our curriculum develops confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives and can become responsible citizens who can make positive contributions to society.

Unity Education Trust – Specialist Schools – Curriculum Intent Statement

Our Curriculum Statement

The UET Pathfinder Douglas Bader Academy is committed to teaching the national curriculum whilst fully considering the wide range of needs of all our pupils. Our curriculum is dynamic, engaging and designed to prepare pupils for their next step of education or employment. Our curriculum is also designed to; ensure content is relevant to our learners at each stage of their academic journey, support active citizenship, develop social awareness, promote equality and diversity as well as aiming to inspire and nurture a passion for learning.

INTENT: What are we trying to achieve with our curriculum?

We aim to foster independent learners and use coaching principles to enable pupils to identify their educational and life goals and the steps they need to take to achieve these. A high level of adult support is utilised to engage and motivate our pupils and to provide a positive education experience.

The key barriers to learning and any SEN needs are identified for each individual pupil and informs the planning of lessons to inspire, motivate and drive independence and ownership of learning.

National policies such as Relationships Sex and Health Education, British Values, Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development are embedded into the curriculum with a focus on preparing for adult life, responsible citizenship and positive community involvement.

Through learning linked to real life contexts and the pupils’ individual interests we aim to ensure all our pupils have positive, meaningful and bespoke learning experiences.

We continually review our curriculum offer and undertake pupil and parent surveys to collate views across our offer within primary and secondary. This help us to be confident that our offer is designed to fulfil the intentions outlined above.

IMPLEMENTATION: How do we deliver our curriculum?

In order to provide pupils across the UET Pathfinder Douglas Bader Academy with experiences that are relevant, interesting and challenging and to identify opportunities for progression we have adopted a flexible curriculum structure using learning pathways for KS3 and KS4 pupils which allows for developmental progress regardless of age or starting points.

Underpinning all our planning is the requirement for personalised, individual learning opportunities in order to engage pupils. We ensure pupils are aware of learning objectives and success criteria to achieve the learning goal. Self evaluation is key so that pupils can identify their next steps and have a clear understanding or their starting point, the lesson purpose and the learning goal.

Should you require any further information on the curriculum that your child is following, please contact Mrs J. Keyes: jkeyes@unityeducationtrust.org.uk 

Pathfinder Pathway Model 2023/2024