The Curriculum at JTFS

A detailed description of both our curriculum model and each subject can be found below:

Students are taught in mixed ability groups. There are 6 lessons in the day (50 minutes each). Students have a Personal Tutorial session 4 mornings a week for 20 minutes; these are in vertically arranged groups of approximately 20 students. Once a week, this is a full 50 minute lesson.

“We believe in the power of education to improve lives – and the world.” This statement, at the heart of John Taylor Multi-Academy Trust, will also be at the heart of the curricular and enrichment programme offered at John Taylor Free School. All themes and subjects, and the effectiveness of their delivery, have been constructed to improve the lives, both current and future, of the students we serve, and in so doing enable them to in turn improve the world around them – locally, nationally, and globally.

Students at John Taylor Free School know that they must “turn up, work hard, and be nice” in order that in turn they can “Be Amazing!” This ethos of rejecting complacency and mediocrity is at the heart of the Free School’s values, and percolates through our curriculum, pastoral care and behaviour management, and into the wider opportunities of leadership and challenge that we present young people with throughout the seven years they are at the school.

Our Curriculum in Years 7 and 8  is underpinned by driving questions which enable students to make genuine links and connections within and between subjects. In this way, students discover that there is more than one way to answer that question; this enables them to understand a concept in a range of different ways and contexts. STRIPE learning behaviours are integrated into all subjects, which are taught discretely. 

The STRIPE programme achieves the following outcomes:

• significant impact on student ‘readiness’ for the secondary curriculum
• more cohesive student interactions as they integrate from different local primary schools
• enables students to focus on skills development as much as knowledge and understanding
• heightens appreciation of the links between subject areas across the curriculum
• raises levels of participation, via the ‘passport’ of competencies that compels all to engage
• improves levels of enjoyment in learning
• provides stretch and challenge for students of all abilities and aptitudes

However, unlike some ‘blended’ learning/topic-based study, STRIPE achieves the above without compromising the academic and assessment rigour of a traditional subject-by-subject offer.