Curriculum

School Vision

At ESJ we celebrate every member of our family; we embody our Christian ethos through living well together with people of different cultures, genders, sexualities, faiths and abilities. We ready students for life through an ambitious, relevant curriculum that develops wisdom of the world around them and promotes a love of learning. Using this knowledge, ESJ students will courageously challenge outdated views, confidently communicate and demonstrate compassion through aspiring to make a difference in their local community and the wider world.

‘Be transformed by the renewing of your mind’ ~ Romans:12

Curriculum Vision at Epping St. John’s

Our rigorous and challenging curriculum has been consciously designed to ready students for life beyond Epping St. John’s. Each subject has devised an ambitious and courageous education with character through a curriculum that offers students opportunities to not only deepen their knowledge of subject content and where their studies might lead them, but also to use this as a springboard to engage with relevant, topical issues that permeate society- locally, nationally and globally. The desired effect is to develop wisdom in all and to instil strong ethical values that will help students to live well together with all members of society. Epping St. John’s students should leave our school with the knowledge and values that will help them to have the highest of hopes and aspirations for themselves in terms of further education destinations and employment, and to become compassionate citizens who desire to effect positive change in their local community and the wider world.

We encourage parents/carers (both current and prospective) to take a look at our curriculum offer to see how we align our curriculum design to our school’s vision. Use this support your children at home with home-learning and revision.

Assessment and Feedback

Students will be formatively assessed throughout the year based on the content detailed in our subject curriculum maps. Formative assessment will take place in every lesson through: interleaved recap questions that develop links between prior and current learning, live feedback, questioning and evaluating samples of work under the visualiser.

Students will also sit summative in-class assessments at the end of topics/units that will cover in-topic and pre-topic knowledge from earlier learning, so that students continue to make links between their learning, and transfer this to their long-term memory. These assessments will test their knowledge and the skills developed over the course of the unit, so they will be well-prepared. Teachers will provide personalised feedback on these assessments with clear targets for improvement that will be addressed in subsequent lessons. Teachers will also, through diagnostic marking, identify common misconceptions to inform their planning to address these areas for development in future lessons through a reteach of content and/or skills.

Reporting Academic Progress

Students will receive progress reports (SPRs) at the following times:

• Years: 7,8,9,10 and 12 December and July of each academic year
• Years: 11 and 13 in February following their January PPEs

 

Home-Learning

Students will be asked to complete a range of home-learning tasks per week from each subject across the curriculum, including but not limited to:

• Reading
• Independent research and wider reading
• Quizzes- knowledge retrieval; spellings and vocabulary definitions
• Short written responses
• Revision for in-class assessments
• Exam-style questions (Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5)
• Online Learning Platforms e.g. Sparx and Seneca

We know our parents & carers love to know what their children are learning at Epping St John's.  Please find further below the details of what your child will be learning.