St Philip Howard Catholic High School have given 20% of their Year 7 curriculum time to ‘Challenge Day’, where learners engage in cross curricular activities designed to develop their personal learning and thinking skills. Headteacher David Todd is convinced that such a commitment requires the school to be rigorous in assessing its impact. The programme spends a ‘Challenge Day’ with Steve Williams and his Year 7 class, where he gathers photographic evidence to gauge how groups of learners are working together. We also see self-assessment spider diagrams, which explore the ‘health’ of pupils’ skills and peer assessment, where pupils assess the development of teamwork by completing module review sheets. All these different ‘lenses’, paint a robust and rigorous picture of how St Philips’ is monitoring the impact of their new curriculum.

Video Series: New Secondary Curriculum
Release Date 2008