Curriculum Overview

Our aim is to provide an excellent education which brings out the best in all of our students and prepares them for success in education and life.  We deliver a curriculum which equips children with powerful knowledge, maximises their cognitive development and nourishes the whole person and the talents of the individual. The curriculum therefore liberates and empowers, providing pupils with the confidence to understand and shape the world around them, to be active and economically self-sufficient citizens.

Our curriculum is based on these key principles:

• Entitlement: All pupils have the right to learn what is in the United Learning curriculum, and The Cornerstone Academy have a duty to ensure that all pupils are taught the whole of it.
• Coherence: Taking the National Curriculum as its starting point, our curriculum is carefully sequenced so that powerful knowledge builds term by term and year by year. We make meaningful connections within subjects and between subjects.
• Mastery: We ensure that foundational knowledge, skills, and concepts are secure before moving on. Pupils revisit prior learning and apply their understanding in new contexts. 
• Adaptability: The core content – the ‘what’ – of the curriculum is stable, but teachers will bring it to life in their own local context, and adapt lessons – the ‘how’ – to meet the needs of their own classes.
• Representation: All pupils see themselves in our curriculum, and our curriculum takes all pupils beyond their immediate experience
• Education with character: Our curriculum - which includes the taught subject timetable as well as spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development, our co-curricular provision, and the ethos and ‘hidden curriculum’ of the school – is intended to spark curiosity and to nourish both the head and the heart.

As a academy, we ensure that all our pupils experience a broad and ambitious curriculum that builds over time – week by week, term by term and year by year. In doing so, children bring their own experience into a shared story that enables them to leave our care with confidence and curiosity. 

We provide the full National Curriculum throughout Key Stage 3. This includes PE, RE, music, art, and DT

We are proud to offer a wide range of traditional GCSEs and vocational courses. KS4 courses last two years and students' study 3 periods per week in each options subject. 

Most students study at least 9 GCSEs (or equivalents) including English Language, English Literature, Maths, Science and RE. In addition, students also take part in Physical Education (PE) and RE.  Students have three collapsed days of Personal Development.