It is our intention to provide all children with a broad and balanced, yet challenging and inspiring, Science curriculum. We wish to provide them with opportunities to seek understanding of even the most complex concepts through a deep curiosity of the world around them; this is fostered through engagement with a carefully sequenced and enriched curriculum.

There is a clear interplay within the subject delivery between substantive and disciplinary knowledge; careful teaching of the two facilitates development of a well-developed schema in our students. The body of substantive knowledge delivered to students explains natural phenomena, whilst the skills acquired through engagement with the disciplinary enables our young people to succeed across the curriculum and beyond, to become effective citizens of the world.

Science is changing our lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity, and all students should be taught essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science. They should be helped to appreciate the achievements of science in showing how the complex and diverse phenomena of the natural world can be described in terms of a number of key ideas relating to the sciences which are inter-linked, and which are of universal application. These key ideas include:

• the use of conceptual models and theories to make sense of the observed diversity of natural phenomena;

• the assumption that every effect has one or more cause;

• that change is driven by interactions between different objects and systems;

• that many such interactions occur over a distance and over time;

• that science progresses through a cycle of hypothesis, practical experimentation, observation, theory development and review;

• that quantitative analysis is a central element both of many theories and of scientific methods of inquiry.

The sciences should be taught in ways that ensure students have the knowledge to enable them to develop curiosity about the natural world, insight into working scientifically, and appreciation of the relevance of science to their everyday lives, so that students:

• develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics;

• develop understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science, through different types of scientific enquiry that help them to answer scientific questions about the world around them;

• develop and learn to apply observational, practical, modelling, enquiry, problem-solving skills and mathematical skills, both in the laboratory, in the field and in other environments;

• develop their ability to evaluate claims based on science through critical analysis of the methodology, evidence and conclusions, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Please click on the link below to see a Curriculum Overview of Key Stages 3 and 4, then Curriculum Overviews of Key Stage 5 Biology, Chemistry and Physics.  This details the goals for each key stage, what students will be learning in lessons and an articulation of the wider curriculum.