Teaching, Learning and Curriculum at James Brindley

Our curriculum is broad and balanced meeting the requirements of the National Curriculum and the needs of our pupils to allow them to reach their full potential. We take a personalised approach to teaching and learning, matched to the individual needs of pupils, whilst taking account of particular SEND, health and medical needs. 

British Values, UNICEF Rights of the Child, Safeguarding, literacy, numeracy and developing creativity are placed at the heart of the curriculum and are woven through all subject areas.

At James Brindley we are constantly developing our curriculum to ensure it is fit for purpose and allows our pupils to succeed whilst with us and also after transition whether this is back to home schools or post 16.  Each of our sectors offers a bespoke curriculum to reflect the nature of the cohorts but with all the same values and ethos.

James Brindley aims to continue to develop pedagogy for our teaching and support staff to deliver the highest quality teaching to our pupils.  We have a hugely experienced and dedicated team across all of our sites who are involved in ongoing professional development throughout the year.

We have recently developed a new assessment system.  This system is based on forecasting the end of phase attainment for pupils, rather than quantifying their current ability.  This system is a robust way to demonstrate the accuracy of James Brindley teacher’s professional judgements and clearly feeds into the design of suitable curriculum phase and qualification pathways.  Forecasts will be recorded in standard recognised formats for end of phase and qualification.  There is understanding that the learning journey of a pupil is influenced by many external factors, only some of which can be captured in a quantitative assessment system, along with the knowledge that forecasts can change over time and a reduced forecast is not an indication of regression.

The system builds in the understanding that pupils progress at different rates so it does not try to measure the exact progress made.  Instead the system broadly determines whether a pupil is on track to achieving their forecast or not.  If a pupil is making progress the system has some fine gradings available to identify whether they will exceed (P+) or fall below (P-) their most recent forecast. 

Please see the video in the link below for further information regarding the new assessment system.

To get further information on the curriculum offer go to the individual sector sections of the website.

Progress and Forecast at James Brindley