Our Academy
Our Curriculum
The Academy curriculum ensures all pupils in the Academy experience a rich, broad and balanced experience, reflecting the FMAT mission of `Enriching lives, transforming futures`. We want all our students to experience the joy and wonder of learning.
We place a strong emphasis on nurturing the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils, along with a firm commitment to developing pupils’ resilience and character through the acquisition of life skills. We are preparing all our pupils to contribute positively to modern British society and have a suitable career and destination. All pupils have the entitlement to study a rich and varied curriculum.
The Trust values permeate the curriculum
- Excellence: a curriculum of the highest quality to ensure excellent outcomes
- Dedication: we believe there is dignity in hard work
- Ambition: we want the very best for all of our students.
- Integrity: moral purpose will underpin the curriculum decisions we make for our pupils
- Tradition: British values, literacy and numeracy underpin the curriculum
We believe all students, whatever their background, are able to become experts in the disciplines that they study. Their expertise will be achieved through quality teaching and the dissemination of deep knowledge by highly skilled and knowledgeable subject experts – in every classroom, every lesson, every day. This means that our teachers are subject experts who model excellence and allow our students the opportunity to deliberately practise their responses at length. Our feedback policy is designed to clearly demonstrate strengths and areas for development in student work and consequently our workbooks demonstrate resilient and confident learners.
Our students have the right to be introduced to deep knowledge and a wealth of information from the spectrum of subjects that they study. They will be introduced to, and understand, theories and principles that have influenced, continue to influence, and will influence in the future, the world in which they live. They will be prepared to fully engage in academic discussion about their learning. This learning will secure a successful place in society for our students. They will go further than they ever thought possible.
Not only do we place high value in our timetabled curriculum, we work hard to ensure this is complemented through high quality out of hours learning in the Arts and sport. These opportunities are highly valued and held in high esteem by students and staff alike. We believe in developing well rounded young people beyond the classroom and we have an extensive extracurricular timetable providing opportunities both at lunch time and at the end of the academy day.
As a community we believe that high quality vocational learning continues to be meaningful to our students and we have many students who choose to pursue careers through employment based training opportunities such as apprenticeships in addition to those who study vocational and academic qualifications in post-16 education. Careful planning and delivery enables our vocational subjects to be delivered with the academic rigour and ambition that characterises the non-vocational components of the curriculum.
In addition to preparing our students for the world of work and further education, it is important that all students can form a sense of justice and a moral code to guide them through life. This is why our PSHE, SRE and Religious Education curricula continue to underpin the taught curriculum. Staff are expected to draw on these subjects regardless of their area of subject expertise and we deliver immersion days to provide relevant key messages as determined by both the local and national contexts. Religious Education is taught as a separate subject at Key Stage 3 and in collaboration with PSHE at Key Stage 4, as well being offered as a GCSE option.
Our curriculum policy can be found in the Policies page.
Our curriculum overview can be found here: Curriculum Overview
More on our curriculum
Should you wish to find out more about the curriculum your child is following at Smith’s Wood Academy, please contact Mr S Friswell, Vice Principal (Quality of Education) s.friswell@smithswood.fmat.co.uk.