Child Development Key Groups

All areas of our curriculum at Boldon School, is successfully adapted, designed and developed to be ambitious and meet the needs of all students. Each subject area develops their knowledge, skills and abilities to apply what they know and can do this with increasing fluency and independence.

Our teachers check pupils’ understanding systematically, identify misconceptions accurately and provide clear, direct feedback. They respond and adapt their teaching as necessary without unnecessarily elaborate or individualised approaches. This is to get the very best outcomes for our students whether they are SEND, disadvantaged or to challenge our higher ability students. This will ensure that students are ready for their next stage of education, employment or training to gain qualifications that allow them to go on to destinations that meet their interests and aspirations and the intention of their course of study.

How the Child development Curriculum supports our SEND students:

The Department for Education states, ‘Children and young people with SEND all have learning difficulties or disabilities that make it harder for them to learn than most children and young people of the same age. These children and young people may need extra or different help from that given to others.’

Boldon School is an inclusive school where every student is encouraged to develop a thirst for knowledge, to enjoy their curriculum and feel valued as a member of our school community. We are committed to the progress, inclusion and resilience of each student and support the learning journey that they require. Our curriculum is successfully adapted, designed or developed to be ambitious and meet the needs of pupils with SEND, developing their knowledge, skills and abilities to apply what they know and can do with increasing fluency and independence across all subject areas.

Students with SEND are supported in 

Students with SEND are supported in Child Development through clear understanding of who these children are and the identification of their own individual needs. We have high expectations of all students, catered for through a positive and nurturing environment. We provide differentiated activities in all lessons and as part of all lessons. These resources are accessible yet still challenging. These follow the whole school strategy of BAR tasks for students independent enquiry. Key tasks are adapted into smaller chunks to allow access to key concepts within the topic areas. This allows learners to build their confidence and develop their independence. We use a working together, learning together approach where group work is structured to enable all learners to be challenged but supported in their learning. Additional support staff are deployed with careful planning to ensure progress is maximised. Students have the ability to track their progress through monitoring documents, knowing what they need to do for their current task and the next part of their learning journey.

How the child development Curriculum supports our disadvantaged students:

The Secretary of State for Education set out the government’s national plan to support children and young people to reach their full potential, regardless of their backgrounds. With an overarching goal and aim of improving social mobility through education, and delivering better educational and career outcomes more evenly across England.

At Boldon School we have 50% of our students with high levels of deprivation, but strive to raise the attainment and aspirations of all students regardless of social background. We have a robust allocation system of pupil premium funding to obtain the most successful outcomes for our students and to narrow the gaps in attainment across all subject areas.

Disadvantaged students are supported in Child Development in a variety of ways. Early identification and knowledge of who these students are is key to seating allocations, discrete identification on books and through the everyday teaching strategies adopted. Resources and revision guides are provided free of charge. As a team we recognise the importance of child development, the enjoyment these students have and the impact it has on our most vulnerable students. We seek to identify any barriers to learning and ensure effective, timely and appropriate intervention is put in place. Staff continuously reach out to support any additional work that may be required both in school and after school to aid in catch up, plug gaps in knowledge or further progress in what they have already achieved. Both formative and summative forms of assessment help to inform progress of students as well as retrieval and retention activities provide a true picture of our students long term memory. Strong relationships are built and maintained in this subject area. We recognise content must be challenging, yet achievable in order to increase self-esteem. Having high expectations of all of our students helps promote positive behaviour, which in turn has a positive impact on performance. High quality teaching methods such as dual coding, scaffolding and modelling are all strategies that foster active engagement in our lessons. Whole school and faculty CPD allows new strategies to be explored in engaging and promoting the development of metacognition with all of our students.

How the child development Curriculum supports our higher ability students:

HM Chief Inspector stated, If we are going to succeed as an economy and as a society, we have to make more of our most able young people. We need them to become the political, commercial and professional leaders of tomorrow. 

At Boldon school we aim to nurture scholastic excellence through a challenging curriculum where the work given to students is demanding and matches the aims of the curriculum in being coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge. We recognise the need to stretch and challenge all students but especially our MAT and higher ability students to obtain maximum progress.

Higher ability students are supported in Child Development through appropriate and timely challenge. Students are expected to choose the more demanding tasks that are set eg Red tasks within BAR activities, quality mark feedback, the highest mark band criteria in coursework and provide greater depth in examination style questions. This is supported by teaching staff within discussions, questioning, the design of tasks and bespoke, timely feedback. Students will adopt different roles within a lesson to deepen their own knowledge but also support the work of their peers through effective groupings, seating allocation and collaborative work. Close and clear monitoring will ensure the appropriate level of challenge is being deployed to develop critical thinking skills with a creative approach. We support our higher ability students to think for themselves, communicate effectively with peers and in groups, read and understand with confidence and respond to deep and rich questioning that will help to expand their learning repertoire. During exam preparation, high ability students will be challenged to develop their answers to extended writing questions. Mastering this skill will allow them to unlock the higher grades. Their work is often used as exemplar materials to share good practice with other students.