Our curriculum vision
Colton Hills Community School is an inner-city school with a diverse cohort that draws from a wide range of cultures, nationalities and identities. Our curriculum seeks to address the disadvantage that may exist within these different communities by giving our students access to everything that the world can offer.
Our school proudly holds the status of a School of Sanctuary, where students from across the local area – and across the globe, too – can come together to learn harmoniously regardless of their background.
Therefore, the intention of our curriculum is that we will offer our students the access to a broad and varied curriculum that seeks to equip them for modern life. We have designed our curriculum to ensure that students have every opportunity to gain worthwhile employment, attend a top university and have access to the social mobility that can change lives for themselves and their families.
One of the most pivotal aspects is making our students highly literate and numerate, ensuring that they have the fundamental skills necessary to take their place in society. Our skill makes literacy a central aspect of life at Colton Hills and addressing deficiencies in reading – whether due to prior achievement or being new to the language – is something that we attack with all of our energies.
We are aiming for world-class education. We, therefore, intend our curriculum to be knowledge-rich, deep in its explorations of topics, challenging, and with a distinctive, outward-looking, international feel. We want our students to make sure that our students encounter the best of what has been said and written throughout human history, and the chance to read these words is something that we hold dear in our curriculum.
We recognised the importance of grounding our curriculum in its wider contexts to enable us to fill gaps in our students’ knowledge. We are unapologetic in ensuring that our students have every opportunity to engage with as much powerful knowledge as anyone else in the country.
With these school contexts in mind, at Colton Hills we have built our curriculum around a series of thematically based Curricular Concepts that students will see in various subjects, enabling them to draw links and supporting them in making connections that might not always be apparent to them.
The intention of our curriculum at all stages is that we will teach all children at our school that:
Social Justice
Humanity is on an optimistic, positive journey of developing tolerance, enfranchisement and rights for all peoples, and we must all play our part in this.
Diversity
We value social and cultural diversity – we are officially a school of ‘sanctuary’.
We strive to enrich our community by tackling inequality, promoting fairness and challenging prejudice.
The Colton Hills school community is diverse, and we are immensely proud of this fact.
We ensure that all members of our school community are heard and represented, and that there is respect for and celebration of the different faiths, cultures and traditions of all who attend our school.