At The Hayfield School, we believe that the curriculum is at the very heart of what a school is for. It determines not simply the qualifications our students achieve, but the knowledge they encounter, the ideas they explore, the experiences they share and, ultimately, something of the young people they become.
Our Headteacher and school leaders therefore place great importance on the quality, breadth and ambition of our curriculum. It is carefully considered, regularly reviewed and shaped by strong subject expertise, educational research and emerging thinking about what young people need to flourish in a rapidly changing world.
We are proud of our long tradition of academic success and make no apology for being ambitious for every student. Our curriculum is knowledge-rich and academically rigorous because we believe that powerful knowledge opens doors. Students should encounter ideas, people, places, cultures and perspectives that take them beyond their immediate experience and enable them to understand the world more deeply.
But knowledge is not simply something to be accumulated. We want our students to think with it, question it, connect it and apply it.
Our curriculum is broad and balanced, particularly throughout Key Stage 3, because we believe that young people deserve the opportunity to experience the richness of different disciplines before making choices about future study.
Within each subject, curriculum leaders make deliberate decisions about what students should learn and the order in which they should learn it. Carefully planned and sequenced Learning Journeys enable students to build secure foundations, revisit important concepts and develop increasingly sophisticated knowledge, skills and understanding from Year 7 through to Year 11.
We also recognise that different subjects represent different ways of understanding the world. Learning to think like a historian is different from thinking like a scientist, mathematician, artist or geographer. Our curriculum therefore develops students’ disciplinary knowledge and literacy, teaching them how to read, write, speak, reason and communicate successfully within different subjects.
This emphasis on secure subject knowledge and disciplinary thinking reflects an important direction within contemporary curriculum thinking: knowledge provides young people with access to experiences beyond their everyday lives and creates the foundations upon which deeper thinking and expertise can develop.
While subjects retain their own distinctive identity, learning should not always exist in isolation.
Through our approach to Linking Learning, subject teams identify meaningful connections across the curriculum. This might involve students encountering a concept, historical period, mathematical technique, text or theme in more than one subject and being helped to recognise how their learning connects.
These connections are purposeful rather than artificial. They help students retrieve prior knowledge, make sense of new learning and appreciate how different disciplines can illuminate the same issue from different perspectives.
Our curriculum is ambitious for every student.
We believe strongly that disadvantage, SEND or prior attainment should not determine the intellectual ambition of the curriculum a young person experiences. Our responsibility is to identify and reduce barriers, provide appropriate support and enable all students to access rich and challenging learning.
This commitment to high expectations for all is particularly important. Current curriculum thinking recognises both the continuing importance of a knowledge-rich education and the need to ensure that background or additional need does not become a barrier to ambitious learning.
Our curriculum therefore seeks to combine excellence with equity: maintaining high expectations while providing the support students need to meet them.
Academic achievement matters enormously at Hayfield. We want our students to leave us with excellent qualifications that enable them to progress confidently to their chosen next steps.
But we are not an exam factory.
A great education must amount to more than examination preparation. Our curriculum deliberately creates opportunities for students to encounter wider knowledge, develop cultural understanding, explore ideas and interests, and acquire the personal and social knowledge they will need beyond school.
Through Character and Culture, careers education, enrichment and extracurricular opportunities, students learn about relationships, citizenship, society, finance, careers and the wider world. They have opportunities to perform, compete, create, lead, volunteer, debate, travel, collaborate and discover interests that may remain with them for life.
This wider conception of curriculum is increasingly important as we prepare young people for a world undergoing rapid technological, environmental and social change. Current curriculum thinking emphasises the continuing importance of secure subject knowledge alongside critical thinking, digital and media literacy and the applied knowledge young people need for adult life and work.
Ultimately, our curriculum reflects what we value as a school.
We want students to achieve highly, but also to develop the character and dispositions that will help them use their knowledge and talents well.
Throughout their time at Hayfield, students encounter and practise our shared values of:
Kindness • Decency • Strong Work Ethic • Creativity • Resilience
These values are not confined to a particular lesson or programme. They are reinforced through academic subjects, Character and Culture, tutor time, enrichment, careers, the House System and the wider life of the school.
Together, these experiences support our central ambition for every young person who joins The Hayfield School:
Achieve. Belong. Thrive.
Our curriculum is designed to help students achieve through knowledge, scholarship and high expectations; belong through inclusion, participation and understanding of themselves and others; and thrive by developing the character, confidence, curiosity and resilience to embrace the opportunities and challenges of life beyond school.
Area | Subject | Year 7 & 8 | Year 9 | Year 10 | Year 11 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
English and Humanities | English Language | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
English Literature | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | |
History | 2 | 2 | |||
Spanish | 2 | 2 | |||
Drama | 1 | 1 | |||
STEM + MFL | Mathematics | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
Science | 3 | 3 | 6 | 6 | |
IT | 1 | 1 | |||
Geography | 2 | 2 | |||
Creative Rotations | Food Art Dance
Photography Textiles | 3 | |||
Food Animal Care Art Architecture | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||
Physical Education | Games | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Character & Culture | Character & Culture Lesson | 1 | 1 | ||
Character & Culture Collapsed Days | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
In Year 10 and Year 11, students study three subjects for a total of three hours each per week.
Year 10 subjects | Year 11 subjects |
|---|---|
Animal Care | Animal Care |
Architecture | Architecture |
Art | Art |
Computer Science | Business Studies |
Construction | Computer Science |
Drama | Construction |
Fashion & Textiles | Drama |
Geography | French |
History | Geography |
Hospitality & Catering | History |
i-media | Hospitality & Catering |
Photography | i-media |
Physical Education | Photography |
Sociology | Physical Education |
Spanish | Sociology |
Sport | Spanish |
– | Sport |
– | – |
Please note that we review our curriculum offer on an annual basis; consequently, the option subjects available for students may vary from year to year.
