The Sacred Heart High School aims to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, differentiated and relevant to each student’s needs, so that each one will be challenged to achieve her potential spiritually, morally, academically, physically and socially.

Curriculum

The National Curriculum is delivered in accordance with the regulations laid down by the Secretary of State.

However, the school aims to extend all girls by offering a range of subjects wider than that required by the National Curriculum and by ensuring that there is a range of co-curricular experiences and activities available to all pupils .

The formal curriculum is organized into a thirty period week. Each period is fifty minutes long.

There is a rotating P.S.E. period which moves throughout the week. The programme is currently being developed to respond to pupil need, and to reinforce cross curricular elements found elsewhere in the curriculum. Pupils are taught in mixed ability classes for the most part, but in certain subjects, they are put into different ability sets so that curriculum delivery and individual pupil needs can be supported.

Key Stage 3

At Key Stage 3, all pupils are offered a broad and balanced curriculum in line with National Curriculum demands, which includes spiritual, moral, religious, linguistic, literary, aesthetic, creative, scientific, technological, historical, geographical, environmental and physical areas of knowledge and experience. In Year 7, as well as Religious Studies, English, Maths, Science, ICT Technology, Art, History, Geography, music, a Modern Language, and Physical Education, which are the core and foundation subjects of the National Curriculum, all students study Drama and Dance. In Year 9 a second Modern Foreign Language is available for girls who have an aptitude in this area.

Key Stage 4

At Key Stage 4, a broad and balanced curriculum is achieved through offering a range of core and extended core subjects.

In Year 10 these include R.S., English, Maths, Science, Technology, Modern Foreign Languages, Business Studies and Physical Education. Alongside the core and extended core subjects, other subjects are organized in option blocks in Year 10 and Year 11.

As far as possible, option subjects are organized in both years to sustain balance and to meet individual development needs and personal interests.

Special Educational Needs

In accordance with the school Mission Statement and Aims, Learning Support at Sacred Heart High School identifies and supports those girls who are liable to find the classroom experience a stressful or an unrewarding one because of a difficulty that hinders their learning.

Learning Support aims to ensure accessibility to the full school curriculum through effective differentiation that meets the identified needs of individual students.

All girls identified by the screening processes and ongoing teacher assessment as having a learning difficulty are entered at one of three stages on the school's Learning Support Register. The progress of girls on the Register is periodically reviewed, enabling appropriate levels of intervention to be made. For those girls with identified literacy and numeracy needs small group or individual withdrawal is provided. The amount of support and other resources are allocated according to the level of need identified through the assessment processes. When their expertise is required to assess and support a girl's progress, Sacred Heart makes full use of the Educational Psychologist and Specialist Teaching Team provided by Hammersmith & Fulham.

The quality and effectiveness of Learning Support is constantly reviewed as part of our continued commitment to improve and develop special educational needs provision at Sacred Heart.