Science Department - Overarching Curriculum Intent (September 2024) 

RFSS Curriculum Vision Statement: 

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To build an inclusive curriculum which is aspirational for all and empowers our students to make outstanding academic and personal progress.  

Science Curriculum in Context: 

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Rugby Free Secondary School (RFSS) is a member of the Learning Today and Leading Tomorrow (LT2) Trust, which encompasses RFSS and Rugby Free Primary School (RFPS). Rugby as a local authority has a higher-than-national average cost of living and is the site of a famous private school as well as 3 grammar schools within the local area. The local context of Rugby influences our curriculum intent and implementation and our offers is driven by the diverse and multicultural nature of our student body and our commitment to celebrate diversity and champion equity and diversion. We cater to a wide range of subgroups with alternative provision available to a higher-than-national average numbers of SEND, pupil premium and EAL students as well as enriching, stretching and challenging high performing pupils to enhance and deepen their understanding of the scientific concepts and world around them.  

The ongoing impact of the COVID-19 can still be felt across Science learning where student’s disciplinary knowledge of working scientifically and practical skills has been significantly impacted due to the inability to conduct hands on practical work during this time and staff being unable to effectively model and demonstrate practical investigations which support learning. Whilst the impact on substantive knowledge has seen less of an impact, the impact on literacy and numeracy skills has directly impacted student’s foundational knowledge which support the Science curriculum. In a growing technological world the importance of student’s understanding how things work in order to support them in their future careers where Science and technology will play a pivotal role is important. We have built our curriculum in order to engage pupils with the content but also by incorporating real life and  

Curriculum Aims: 

Our curriculum aims to: 

• Develop of an inclusive, diverse, and immersive environment focusing on a 360-student experience where academia, creativity, talent, and aspiration is combined with the building of resourceful, resilient problem solvers, fully equipped as outstanding learners to become outstanding world citizens and young adults.  

• Inspire scientific curiosity and confidence by building on the ideas that pupils bring to lessons and have previously learnt in primary science.  

• Prioritise and develop scientific disciplinary and substantive vocabulary and support pupils’ ability to read complex academic texts and write confidently about science.  

• Provide opportunities for structured talk to improve student’s oral communication and responses in order to effectively present solutions and grow their problem-solving skills, as well as accurately analyse and draw conclusions from a wide range of subject matter. 

• Create self-regulated independent learners who are able to apply and link key scientific knowledge and principles across a broad spectrum of contexts and subjects they study.  

• Develop students’ knowledge of working scientifically over time through revisiting disciplinary knowledge throughout each key stage with extensive practical work and or demonstrations; with a focus on specific skills at each opportunity linking to working scientifically and the ‘SET for Life’ principles of RFSS.  

Our broad and balanced curriculum concentrates on developing our students’ key knowledge and skills and enhances their understanding of the world around them.   

We do this by: 

• Stimulating intellectual curiosity and independence by shaping content to engaging with the world around pupils using real life contexts and examples.  

• Ensuring that enough time is built into the curriculum for pupils to learn and remember key knowledge and regularly connect new learning to what pupils have already learned and promoting challenge for all, irrespective of starting points.  

• Having suitable curriculum time allocated to science so that all content from the KS3 curriculum is taught in Y7, Y8 and the Autumn term of Y9, which builds on their substantive and disciplinary knowledge from KS2. This is then linked through to KS4 and KS5 to ensure the full breadth of the national curriculum is accessible.  

• Stretch students by introducing disciplinary and substantive vocabulary early in their learning journey to ensure mastery at higher levels and avoid misconceptions e.g. accuracy and precision. 

• Using models to support understanding but also discussing the limitations of models in order to ensure no misconceptions are brought forward into new learning.  

• Ensure pupils have enough opportunities to take part in high quality practical work that has a clear purpose in relation to the curriculum and identifies and sequences the disciplinary knowledge that pupils need to work scientifically.  

• Enriching pupils learning through extra curricula clubs and trips to support, encourage and promote STEM careers.  

Our curriculum is focused on the development of communication, character and cultural capital of each individual student, so they become: 

• Resilient, well-rounded and hardworking citizens equipped with analytical and problem-solving transferable skills they are able to take forward with them into their chosen careers.  

• Articulate individuals who can verbalise their own thoughts, ideas, emotions and knowledge and confidently ask questions, explore and challenge ideas about the world around them.  

• Open minded, morally balanced young people who are empathetic to all cultures and beliefs and promote diversity and equity in their everyday lives and encompass and champion British values. 

Curriculum Outcome: 

At the heart of our Science curriculum is a passion to ignite curiosity and scientific thinking so students leave RFSS with an understanding of how the world works around them. It aims to empowering them with transferable skills in writing and communication, problem solving, analysis and research strategies to ensure they are equipped for their futures as industrious and productive members of our society who are confident to challenge the world around them and equipped to impact positive change upon it.