A broad and balanced Curriculum
The Curriculum at Merit has been aligned to that offered by mainstream schools. This enables students to effectively transition back to school and to gain the qualifications they need to access further education post 16.
Teachers at Merit are fully qualified subject specialists who have designed schemes of work aligned to the National Curriculum. Class sizes are small, which enables personalised learning that can be adapted to suit individual needs.
There are pathways in every subject so every child can access and achieve qualifications, from Entry Level to GCSE. Students can study up to 7 GCSEs at Key Stage 4 in English Language, English Literature, Maths, Combined Science, Geography and RE with some pupils also choosing to study an option subject at their home school. In addition Merit, offers the ICDL computer skills qualification and Princes Trust Achieve.
We are ambitious for our students, ensuring they access a Curriculum that is academically rigorous but also rich in experience outside the classroom. We prioritise the mental health and well being of our students in everything we do, offering a nurturing, supportive environment where students can thrive and achieve.
Curriculum Design
Designing the curriculum is challenging for a number of reasons:
Threshold Concepts
Merit's curriculum has been designed around threshold concepts. A threshold concept is like a portal that opens up a new and previously unaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which a learner cannot progress. Meyer and Land suggest a threshold concept will most likely possess certain important qualities:
Subject leaders at Merit have identified the threshold concepts for their subject, these are the areas where students most commonly get stuck, where pupils need to bring together pieces of knowledge so that they can coalesce into meaning. To give an example, a pupil in Maths would need to understand multiplication before being able to progress to triangles and shape, indices and Pythagoras. In Geography, a pupil would need to understand waves before progressing toward understanding coasts and then coastal erosion.
Subject specific threshold concepts are revisted frequently in all lessons at Merit and the curriculum is ambitious in aiming for all pupils, regardless of their starting point and length of stay at the school, to work towards a transformation in understanding subject matter. Once learned, a threshold concept is difficult to unlearn and can be applied to the subject in any context, this could be in our setting or a different setting like a mainstream school or college.
Merit Assessment
Initial assessment
When a pupil starts at Merit, it is essential that we understand their starting point so we can measure their progress and identify any intervention or additional support needs. We do not always have enough accurate assessment information to plan curriculum pathways for pupils when they arrive. Consequently, every child is assessed in their first term at the school using The Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT4). This assessment is designed to assess how pupils and teachers understand how they learn and what their academic potential might be. It assesses how pupils think in areas that are know to make a difference to learning. Tasks involve thinking about shapes and patterns (Non-Verbal reasoning) words (Verbal reasoning) numbers (Quantitative reasoning) and visual images (Spatial Ability). The test provides a valuable profile of learning for teachers to help them understand what a child is capable of rather than defining them by their knowledge in particular subjects. The test also provides information about individual learning preference and a range of indicators of likely future performance, Merit also uses Fisher Family Trust data to set meaningful pupil targets.
All pupils at Merit also have their reading assessed each term using the NGRT diagnostic test, the test indicates where a student's reading ability sits in relation to the national average and is used to identify where intervention may be needed or further development can be pushed. Termly assessments allows leaders to monitor the impact of interventions and assess progress.
Teacher Assessment
Teachers assess pupils' learning in a number of ways:
1. Formative assessment: regular informal assessments used to assess student understanding and inform teaching strategy
2. Summative assessment: there is a formal written assessment in every subject each half term
Teacher assessment data is shared with parents and pupils every half term.