Our students will receive a broad and balanced, enriching, and ambitious knowledge curriculum with a clear intent, effective implementation, and significant impact demonstrated by successful outcomes for all learners, particularly disadvantaged students. The learner is at the heart of everything that we do.

Our curriculum is intended to serve the mission of Helping Leaners Succeed, whilst enabling us to achieve our aims of ensuring that all students will: 

• feel safe, happy, and healthy and know how to keep themselves, and others, safe, happy, and healthy.
• enjoy high-quality learning opportunities, in a school at the leading edge of innovation.
• feel challenged and inspired to achieve excellence in every aspect of their lives.
• become confident, enterprising, creative learners, fully equipped for life and work.
• become fully rounded and responsible citizens, making a positive contribution to the school, local, national, and global community.

Higham Lane North Academy (HLNA) will continue to employ the innovative approaches that have been so successful at its partner secondary school in the Trust, Higham Lane School, to deliver a comprehensive and ambitious knowledge curriculum that includes the best that has been thought and said, rather than only covering awarding body specifications. We have designed our curriculum to be a narrative that unfolds over time, with teaching within each key stage supporting achievement at a later key stage through deliberate planning and specification selection to support upcoming subjects. Our curriculum will ensure that all students become confident, resilient learners.

Through our curriculum, all students will gain experience in the following areas: 

• Aesthetic
• Scientific
• Mathematical
• Technological
• Linguistic
• Political
• Physical
• Enterprise
• Ethical
• Creative
• Spiritual
• Employment
• Moral, social, and cultural

The curriculum at HLNA will be based on the National Curriculum with a strong emphasis on the EBacc suite of qualifications and will also feature vocational subjects. At the same time, the curriculum will offer the flexibility for personalisation with students able to take GCSEs early or study separate sciences but also reduce the number of subjects studied to receive extra curriculum support or be entered for alternative qualifications where this is appropriate. 

The curriculum will expose students to a wide range of ambitious and challenging content, including the best of English language and literature throughout the ages. Through our curriculum, pupils will be engaged and actively participate in a wide range of reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.

Our students will have a plethora of subjects to choose from, including digital media, IT and an automotive engineering course delivered in collaboration with a number of employers in Key Stage 4. These will be supported by a strong core of English, Maths, Science, and Modern Ethics (leading to a GCSE in Religious Studies) from Key Stage 3, with most students required to select at least one humanity (History or Geography) and one modern foreign language (French or German).

The arts, music, drama, sports and design & technology will be vigorously encouraged at HLNA as these further enrich the students’ learning experience. 

Recognising that the curriculum extends beyond the experiences that students have in the classroom, HLNA plans an extended school day to provide a wide choice of enrichment activities. These are planned to include, but are not limited to, sports, creative and artistic opportunities, First Aid and British Sign Language courses, and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. The school will actively take part in competitive sport locally, regionally and nationally.

The ‘Higham Values and Habits’ of Discipline, Dedication, Perseverance, Resilience and Positivity will form a core element of our curriculum delivery and embody the key values of our school. These will be explicitly taught within the classroom as integrated features of a variety of subjects, as well as independent learning habits to strengthen outcomes at Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 specifically. 

All our pupils will be provided with effective learning opportunities, with appropriate learning challenges that consider their diverse learning needs, enabling them to overcome learning barriers. We will ensure that all students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) learn the powerful knowledge that all learners are entitled to and, we will offer scaffolding and support, explicit instruction, use of technology, flexible grouping, and cognitive strategies as appropriate to enable them to achieve good progress.

We will publish further information on the curriculum shortly.