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About Consilium

Consilium Academies is a multi-academy Trust working across the North of England. It has nine academy schools located in Yorkshire, the North West, and the North East. Consilium is dedicated to enriching lives and inspiring ambitions for both students and colleagues.

Personal Development Curriculum

At Armthorpe, we believe every learner is an individual with a unique personality, characteristics and the potential to shine.  Inclusion therefore lies at the heart of everything we do.  Childhood is changing.  Our learners are growing up in a world defined by fast paced technological development living increasingly online, in spaces adults sometimes struggle to understand.  We place great value on preparing our learners to thrive in 21st century Britain, not just academically but socially, emotionally, morally and culturally too.  It has never been more important to equip our students to adapt to and embrace change, develop their resilience and creative thinking skills whilst instilling a real love of learning.  The development of the whole person is imperative to us and therefore lies at the heart of our personal development offer.

The Personal Development tutor plays a key role as the only guaranteed point of daily contact with students.  It isimperative a good relationship is built as the PD tutor has multiple responsibilities in:

  • Disseminating and setting expectations to ensure the highest standards of behaviour for learning.
  • Ensuring our school values are modelled, understood and lived.
  • Helping students develop socially, emotionally and academically to thrive at Armthorpe and beyond.

The value of effective pastoral care is never under-estimated.  Young people learn well at school when they are happy and content in their environment.  Each student has a Personal Development (PD) Tutor. 

PD tutors see PD groups twice a day:

20 minute value session or assembly each morning

  • A 30 minute reading period each afternoon, or carefully tailored intervention session bespoke to individual need.

Our PD curriculum has been built around our school values, the British Values and the Gatsby Benchmarks to ensure key topics are covered to help our students grow.  The values curriculum supplements the PSCHRE curriculum but also gives the opportunity for student voice and for us to celebrate and monitor behaviour for learning.  PD topics interleave our school values to encourage our students think about how our school values are essential characteristics in the wider world.   We always share our PD plan with parents, as to heighten awareness of challenges our young people may encounter, we touch upon sensitive topics such as suicide awareness, drug abuse and bereavement to build understanding but also empathy.  In KS3, values topics also interleave with our daily reading programme where PD tutors utilise reciprocal reading strategies to read a year group novel with their group. For example, Fault in Our Stars, discusses cancer, tragedy and loss and facilitates conversation around physical and emotional resilience.

As a daily point of contact, our PD programme provides staff with the opportunity to build relationships and informally monitor mental and physical health, formally monitor attendance and be a key driver in the holistic development of PD tutees.

We actively encourage all our students to be leaders; we talk about ‘leaders doing the right thing when no one is watching’.  Assemblies are used to supplement the Values Programme.  Leaders in school disseminate key messages relevant to the values topic to support students moral, cultural and social development.  Where possible, local connections are made to add meaning and try to make the message as ‘real’ and ‘relevant’ as possible.

SMSC

Ensuring students thrive spiritually, morally, socially and culturally

Our PSHE curriculum is written in the same way as other subjects to ensure the right content is taught at the right time. The sequencing and essential knowledge delivered is assured as a department in its own right.  It is our intent to deliver a curriculum that is accessible to all students to enable them to develop knowledge and understanding across five main areas; living in the wider world; health and wellbeing; relationships; financial wellbeing and careers in order to maximise their outcomes both in and after school. Developing mentally resilient, confident and healthy members of a society who can tackle many moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up. This is especially important with the pressures of today’s society, such as dealing with social media, differing relationships and evolving job industries. PSHE is valued across the Academy and the UK for improving outcomes for all students, both personally and academically; therefore, it is essential it be delivered to the highest quality through a range of differing teaching resources and external agencies such as the school nurse; South Yorkshire police and the fire service.

The intent of the religious studies curriculum at Armthorpe Academy is to engage, inspire, challenge and encourage our students to gain an understanding of the varied beliefs within our school, local, national and global communities. The RE curriculum will help to develop responsibility and respect for all aspects of diversity socially, culturally and religiously to prepare students for life in modern Britain. By understanding these beliefs and views, students will have the knowledge and understanding to show tolerance and ultimately coexist. Our curriculum also allows and encourages pupils to form their own opinions on many of the big questions in life, a long with a wide range of ethical issues they may come across in life.