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Curriculum, Teaching and Learning
At Avon Valley Academy (AVA), the curriculum has been thoughtfully and strategically designed to create subject experts, while being mindful of our school’s unique context. To provide a broad context for learning, our curriculum is built around a "Big Picture", in which the core substantive and disciplinary knowledge needed to become an “expert” is sequenced as a learning journey. This knowledge is ordered to build on prior knowledge, ensuring that students’ learning is cumulative and coherent. This careful sequencing is complemented by interleaving, where topics are revisited and integrated to reinforce learning and create connections.
At AVA, we are proud of being a highly inclusive school and this is reflected in our context. Evidence from the Educational Endowment Foundation (EEF) shows that factors such as economic disadvantage and unmet special educational need or disability (SEND) can lead to educational barriers or gaps. At AVA, 28% of our students receive free school meals, a further 20% are “just about managing” due to the rising costs of living, and 20% have SEND. Many of our students also have gaps in learning due to mobility: 40% of our students are from service families, and 15% have recently moved to the UK and speak English as additional language (EAL). Due to this transience, the number of students who join AVA as “non routine admissions” (NRAs) is significant, rising from 10% in Year 7 to over 40% in Year 11.
The careful sequencing of our AVA curriculum enables our disadvantaged, SEND and transient students to flourish as subject experts. The reason for this is that our “Big Picture” curriculum is built on a core of “unmissable knowledge”: reinforcing this enables curriculum progression and thereby ensures that every AVA student - regardless of their starting point - has the best chance of success. Our curriculum design also features regular Recover, Practice, Extend (RPE) sessions, and these provide ongoing opportunities for students to fill gaps, consolidate and extend their knowledge. Knowledge retrieval starter tasks and revision-based homework reinforce and deepen understanding of this “unmissable” content, creating the bespoke flexibility and support needed within our diverse, inclusive and vibrant context.
