Curriculum Overview

Bolton St Catherine’s Academy Curriculum Vision

 At Bolton St Catherine's Academy, our curriculum aims to ensure that our pupils develop the knowledge and skills to be successful within and beyond the classroom. The curriculum challenges our pupils to think critically, to foster independence, and to seek to develop their knowledge to make strong progress in their learning.

Our curriculum is securely sequenced across all subjects, meeting the requirements of the Key Stage 3 National Curriculum and Key Stage 4 specifications. The curriculum is designed to stretch and challenge pupils and reinforces and revisits prior learning, following a sequential and interleaved approach. Our learners incrementally build their knowledge and skills throughout their learning journey at Bolton St Catherine's Academy, deliberately aspiring to extend scholarship in all subjects. It is therefore both ambitious and inclusive and aims to develop in pupils a deep awareness of their learning and understanding that supports them in all their future successes.

Our curriculum is knowledge-rich, because we understand that a strong knowledge base will act as a gateway to other subjects, topics and disciplines. The curriculum ensures learners are taught how to have impact with knowledge; how to communicate knowledge and understanding, how to quantify and conclude, and how to critically analyse and evaluate. The curriculum is designed, and continually developed, to be rich with contexts and themes that are relevant to our learners.

We ensure that our pupils can develop a love of reading — for example, through our Form Time Reading Programme — and have ample opportunity to develop their reading and writing skills in lessons. Pupils study a wide range of subjects in the classroom and have access to a wealth of opportunities to enhance their learning outside of the classroom through independent learning, extracurricular activities and beyond-school experiences. Through a carefully planned programme of clubs, activities, and experiences, pupils are encouraged to explore new interests, develop key life skills, and engage meaningfully with their school and wider community. This facilitates the development of each pupil’s cultural capital and helps them to prepare for their future successes in life beyond Bolton St Catherine's Academy.

All pupils receive Religious Education and Personal, Social and Health Education lessons across their years at Bolton St Catherine's Academy, including Relationships and Sex Education. Career advice and guidance takes place across all years, with pupils working through the Gatsby benchmarks. Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural education and Fundamental British Values are embedded into the curriculum.

At Bolton St Catherine's Academy, our enrichment curriculum provides pupils in Years 7 to 10 with a broad range of opportunities within the classroom that foster personal growth, confidence, and resilience. Opportunities include participation in the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, which supports pupils in building independence, teamwork and leadership through volunteering, physical activity, skill-building and adventurous expeditions.

Curriculum Design Principles

Underpinning the knowledge rich curriculum principles, is the work of Daniel T Willingham, namely:

• Factual knowledge precedes skill. Students need knowledge to provide context to their learning.  Without knowledge, students will not be able to think critically.
• Memory is the residue of thought. By thinking hard about things, students are more likely to remember.
• Deep knowledge is our goal. However, in order to achieve this, students will need shallow knowledge first and new learning is always connected to old learning.
• Proficiency requires practice. To achieve deep knowledge, students must practice.  Alongside this, we must also test how proficient students are becoming.
• Intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work. Successes and failures need to be discussed in terms of effort, not ability, meaning that all can achieve.

As Hirsh writes, knowledge is ‘mental Velcro’. We build our mental schema by connecting new ideas to the knowledge we already have. The more we know, the more the new knowledge sticks. 

In addition to the taught curriculum, students complete weekly Independent Study. This is strongly focused on retrieval practice, as evidence shows that this approach facilitates improved retention of knowledge.

Secondary Curriculum Pathways 2024/25

Year 7:

*Numbers in brackets denote hours in a two-week cycle

Year 8:

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Year 9:

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Year 10: 

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Year 11: 

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Further information 

For more information about the support we provide students with Special Educational Needs (SEN), please refer to this separate section - 

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Section

For more information about our curriculum, please contact Mr Williams, our Deputy Headteacher - 01204 332533 or email contact@boltonstcatherinesacademy.org.uk