Our Curriculum

Our Curriculum

We follow a stage, rather than age, curriculum, ensuring that our curriculum is designed around the individual starting points, needs and aspirations of our pupils, rather than expecting pupils to fit a predetermined age-related curriculum. This enables us to provide the right level of challenge and support at the right time, while maintaining high expectations for all.

Our curriculum is broad, ambitious and purposeful, providing pupils with meaningful opportunities to develop both academic knowledge and the wider skills they need for successful adulthood. Where appropriate, pupils can leave Woodlands with up to 10 GCSEs, alongside Functional Skills and Entry Level qualifications. Our approach recognises that success looks different for different pupils, and we ensure that qualifications are carefully matched to individual starting points, progress and future aspirations.

Alongside our academic offer, we have an exceptional vocational curriculum, which is a key part of our preparation for life beyond Woodlands. Vocational learning provides pupils with opportunities to develop practical skills, explore different sectors and industries, experience success in real-world contexts and begin to understand the expectations of the workplace. Our curriculum is deliberately designed with life after Woodlands in mind, ensuring that pupils develop the knowledge, qualifications, confidence, independence and employability skills required for their next steps.

Our curriculum pathways are therefore not determined by age or prior attainment alone. They are responsive to what pupils know and can do, what they need to learn next and where they want to go in the future. As pupils make progress, their pathway can be reviewed and adapted, ensuring that they are not unnecessarily limited by their starting point.

Ultimately, our curriculum ambition is for every pupil to leave Woodlands with a strong portfolio of academic and/or vocational achievements, alongside the skills, experiences and confidence to progress successfully into further education, training, employment or other appropriate destinations.


Assessment, Curriculum Pathways and the THRIVE Approach
At Woodlands, assessment is used purposefully to establish a clear and accurate understanding of each pupil’s starting point, current attainment and individual areas of strength and need. Upon entry, pupils undertake a range of formative and summative assessments, alongside information gathered from previous settings and professional observations. This enables staff to develop a holistic picture of each pupil’s academic profile and identify gaps in knowledge, skills and understanding.

Establishing an accurate starting point is particularly important for our pupils, many of whom arrive with spiky profiles of attainment as a result of disrupted or inconsistent previous educational experiences. Our assessment processes therefore ensure that gaps in learning are identified early and inform the planning and sequencing of the curriculum. This enables teachers to build systematically on what pupils already know and can do, while addressing misconceptions and securing the essential knowledge and skills they need to make sustained progress.
Assessment is undertaken three times each academic year, providing regular opportunities to evaluate pupils’ progress and the impact of teaching. This information is used alongside ongoing formative assessment to identify pupils who are making strong progress, those who may require additional support, and areas where teaching or curriculum delivery may need to be adapted. Our approach provides the flexibility to respond to pupils’ individual starting points and rates of progress, rather than assuming that all pupils will follow the same trajectory.

Woodlands has two classes in each year group, which enables us to provide greater flexibility in curriculum delivery and respond effectively to differences in pupils’ needs and levels of prior attainment. Where appropriate, pupils follow different curriculum pathways, allowing the pace, depth and level of challenge to be adapted while maintaining high expectations for all. These pathways are not fixed; they are reviewed in response to assessment information and pupils’ demonstrated progress. This ensures that decisions about curriculum pathways remain ambitious, evidence-informed and responsive to individual need.

Our assessment information also enables us to map pupils’ long-term examination and outcomes pathways. This gives staff a clear understanding of pupils’ current position, the knowledge and skills they need to develop, and the intended next steps towards their future qualifications and destinations. These pathways provide clear direction while remaining sufficiently flexible to change as pupils develop and make progress.


The THRIVE Lesson Structure
At Woodlands, we are proud of our THRIVE lesson structure, which provides a consistent framework for high-quality teaching across the school. THRIVE is underpinned by the principles of gradual release, supporting pupils to move from teacher modelling and explicit instruction towards increasingly independent application.

The structure provides pupils with clarity about what they are learning, why they are learning it and what successful application looks like. Teachers use explicit instruction, modelling, guided practice, questioning, checks for understanding and independent application to ensure that pupils are supported to acquire, practise and apply new knowledge and skills.

THRIVE also provides a common language and structure for teaching across Woodlands while allowing teachers to exercise professional judgement and adapt their approach in response to pupils’ needs. This combination of consistency and adaptive teaching is central to our approach: pupils receive the appropriate level of support and challenge while teachers continually respond to evidence of learning within the lesson.

Ultimately, our assessment, curriculum pathways and THRIVE approach work together to ensure that pupils have a clear starting point, a carefully sequenced curriculum and a purposeful pathway towards positive outcomes. We use what we know about pupils to determine what they need to learn next, how best to teach it and how we will know that they have learned it.