Next Steps Curriculum

Curriculum Introduction

	YEAR 7 - Download the full Curriculum and Assessment Plan
	YEAR 8 - Download the full Curriculum and Assessment Plan

Students joining Leeds East Academy in September 2016 will enjoy the benefits of our new ‘Next Steps Curriculum’. This new curriculum is designed to ensure that students demonstrate a thorough understanding of the content / skills contained within each stage of the curriculum before moving onto the next. We strongly believe that retention will be the key to success for our students as they work towards the new heavily exam based GCSEs in five years’ time.

The visual to the right shows the different stages of our curriculum, the name of each level (Explore – Platinum 9) is a common language that will be used across all year 7 subjects and link directly to GCSE outcomes. This line to GCSE grades will help to give us all a good indication of the progress students make over time.

Students who are working at age expected levels at the end of key stage 2 will begin their learning journey on “Bronze” and progress through one stage each year. This would represent very good progress and would lead to students potentially achieving a Grade 5 or 6 at GCSE, which is significantly above national average.

Student flightpaths will be set depending on the information we get from primary schools, as well as our own baseline testing of students which will take place in the first few weeks of September. Based on the combination of this data, we will assign students a starting point which could be above or below ‘Bronze’ level. Whichever pathway students begin their learning journey on, we will continually review progress throughout the year and make adjustments to targets if needed to ensure that students make the maximum amount of progress.

Assignments

To ensure that we accurately track the progress of our students throughout the year, all subjects within the academy will be working to an assignment model of assessment. During the year, students will complete three assignments in each subject that will be assessed using the GCSE exam criteria for each stage of the curriculum.

After each assignment is completed, teachers will give an indication of the performance of students against their subject exam criteria. (The criteria for each curriculum stage is available on our school website). Teachers will state whether a student is ‘on track’ to meet their end of year target using the options shown below:

++	Student is expected to significantly out perform their end of year target grade.
+	Student is expected to exceed their end of year target grade.
=	Student is making good progress and expected to meet their end of year target grade.
-	Student is currently working below the expected progress required to meet their end of year target grade.
*	Student is currently working significantly below the expected progress required to meet their end of year target grade.

After the completion of each assignment and the collection of progress data from teachers, parental reports will be produced to keep you informed of your child’s progress. The parental report will give you an update on ‘Attitude’, ‘Effort’, ‘Homework’, ‘Attendance’ and as stated earlier, whether your child is on track to meet their end of year target or not.

Parental reports will be sent home in December, April and July. Additional guidance on understanding the report will be provided in December.

At the end of each school year, students will sit end of year exams. These exams are designed to get students used to the increased challenge of the new GCSEs but also to ensure that the levels achieved in each assignment are an accurate reflection of a student’s understanding of the curriculum at the end of the school year.