The EPC department consists of one Head of Department and a team of staff from various other disciplines across the academy. As a department, we endeavour to share our passion and enthusiasm with students about our subjects to inspire our students, providing them with the rounded education to be a citizen of tomorrow. 

Head of EPC: Mrs C Wheatley

The EPC curriculum has been designed to provide students with a deep understanding of three key strands:

Our bespoke curriculum is ambitious, challenging and provides an insight into the world we live so that students appreciate the vibrant and multicultural society we live in. The values of our programme are also embedded within other curriculum areas, so students can apply their understanding of these topics in across the curriculum but particularly in Science, English, Computing, Music, History and Geography.

The intent was to create an overarching narrative for our curriculum strands, which covers the requirements of the Kirklees SACRE for Religious Education,  and the PSHE Association Programme of Study . 

Our rationale allows the students to understand what they are learning and why they are learning this now, linking the key ideas together. This will support them to build on the knowledge and skills incrementally, making links to prior learning as well as across the breadth of the curriculum.

The curriculum focuses on:

Teaching & Learning in EPC

To aid students in accessing our ambitious curriculum we have embedded supportive strategies into the way that we deliver our teaching. These strategies include:

Knowledge Organisers (KOs) are designed by our subject specialist teachers and are therefore, bespoke to the topics that students are studying and perfectly match the curriculum narrative. KOs are carefully embedded into the curriculum structure; they are used as a tool for embedding knowledge through consistent homework.

Clear and consistent homework is set weekly by the department. Years 7-10 are expected to have learnt sections of their knowledge organiser as directed by their class teacher. This homework is checked in lessons through low-stakes retrieval practice.  Excellent participation in homework is rewarded through tri-stars and science prizes.

Feedback is provided in the format of demonstrate and connect. This model of feedback ensures that students receive timely, consistent, and personalised feedback on their work.

Subject vocabulary is explicitly taught in every single lesson. EPC involves learning a whole new language, we at Manor Croft ensure that students become fluent in that language by explicitly teaching new vocabulary. We also focus on the etymology of words to aid understanding and linking of vocabulary.

KS3 & 4

In Year 7 -11, students have EPC once a week.  Students follow a similar path within each lesson, revisiting information from previous lessons with individually marked ‘connect’ tasks, giving them a chance to directly address any misconceptions they may still hold after a lesson. The woven curriculum and constant revisiting of topics through ‘drill’ activities, allows students to challenge their pre-existing notions of the world around them in a gradual manner. Using an evidence and experimental-based approach, we give them a chance to reframe their thinking. We use instructional teaching and chunking of information to model and guide students towards understanding, all supported by a well-designed knowledge organiser to help students with independent study. Ultimately students work up to a final assessment at the end of KS4 to illustrate what they have learnt. We give the tools they need through guided practice and low-stakes practice questions to demonstrate their knowledge.

Covid19

The pandemic has meant that we have had to redesign the curriculum and so our breadth of learning has had to change to ensure key assessment topics could be the focus.  The way in which we audit and review the curriculum each year means that we can respond to change quickly but still ensure through our programme of lessons, tutorials, assemblies and step-up days our students can still get the range of experiences and learning.

Extra-Curricular, Memorable Experiences and Cultural Capital

The way that we build our programme of studies does not lead to a particular extra-curricular club, however our ethos is built into the memorable experiences and cultural capital events happening across the school.

For example:

Ambitious Curriculum

Our ambitions for the future is to ensure the curriculum framework focuses on the changing paradigms  of religion and world religions (including humanism) and the national entitlement for RE. Our programme of studies is a tapestry that can be woven in an adaptive to way to respond as the local, national and world context change. I Speed read: Ofsted’s guide to a ‘high-quality’ RE curriculum (schoolsweek.co.uk)

The focus on world views will be at the heart of our ambition. Students will be taught and experience the impact of cultural rituals across the curriculum (Music, Food, Art etc) and an understanding of how Religion or World views has impacted of the day-to-day cultural life of a community who may no longer deem their selves to be a fully practicing member of that faith e.g., celebrates “Christmas Traditions” but does not go to Church to celebrate the Feast Day.

Our Focus will be:

The focus for EPC has been driven from Ofsted Review into RE and our curriculum covers the 6 key criteria.

The Key findings from this review are explained here Schools Week Speed Read of the RE Review

For our students their locality and understanding of the world will be challenged by visits to other parts of the county and country to see how even so close to home, cultural symbols and traditions can change but that we are all still part of one society with shared British Values and active citizens of their community.

Please see consultation document below