Curriculum
Students enter the school in Year 7 with a wide variety of traditional subjects on offer. The emphasis is on English, Maths and Science. The school is a specialist sports college with English as the second specialist subject. Religious Education and Physical Education, take an important part with two lessons a week throughout students time at the school. The school offers three separate sciences at GCSE for those deemed capable. Other subjects include History, Geography, Modern Foreign Languages (taught as French, German and Spanish), Art, ICT, Design Technology, Food Studies and PSHE. However as of September 2011 the school will also be trialing an 'Opening Minds' curriculum just for its Year 7 intake. This is a competency and skills based curriculum that teaches students how to learn. Rather than 'isolated' learning in subjects, the nationwide scheme initially introduced by the former Labour Education Secretary Ed Balls in 2009, aims to get students to learn universal skills and get them to take more responsibility for their leaning, allegedly lacking in a lot of young people. For every new Year 7 this will take place three hours a week. The remainder of the time will be following the traditional curriculum.
At the end of Year 9 students can choose currently three subjects to opt from whilst continuing with English, Maths and Science, Religious Education and Physical Education. All of the traditional subjects are on offer. Students can choose to do Physical Education at GCSE and will therefore increase their time in this subject. The school has introduced a broad range of vocational qualifications where students can if they like, go to a local college one day a week to study subjects such as 'Motor Vehicles' or 'Hair and Beauty'. All students follow a course at either Citizenship or the 'Certificate of Personal Effectiveness' known as COPE.
Read more about this topic: St Philip Howard Catholic School
Famous quotes containing the word curriculum:
“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)