Select the page you require to find out more about the individual departments.
The curriculum at Crossley Heath is designed to support our vision for each of our young people to flourish as an individual, to be curious, to be resilient and to love learning.
We want our young people to receive an education which is well-rounded, exciting and challenging in our selective context, which enables them to grow intellectually, culturally, socially and personally, and which recognises and celebrates the diversity of our school community.
Our curriculum is rooted firmly in our core values:
Self-belief: to believe that we ‘can’, even if ‘not quite yet’.
Respect: to respect each other, our school community, our values and heritage, and our physical spaces; to treat everyone with dignity, tolerance and justice.
Responsibility: to accept personal responsibility for our actions. To conduct ourselves to the highest standards within school and the wider community. To take responsibility to help others and do what is right.
Aspiration: to hold the highest aspirations for ourselves and each other; to aspire to the highest standards and to be ‘the best we can be’ in all that we do.
Challenge: to challenge ourselves to grow, to challenge beliefs that restrict us or restrict our view of others and to be resolute in the face of change or uncertainty.
Purpose: to do the right things, for the right reasons and to do them properly to the highest standards.
We take a ‘Growth Mindset’ approach throughout the school educating our young people to become willing to grapple with learning challenges and to value effort and perseverance.
With a focus upon celebrating diversity actively and explicitly in lessons as well as outside lessons, our students are helped to know, understand and celebrate the diversity of the modern world they live in.
Our taught curriculum creates an academic, knowledge rich environment and promotes the development of personal values, attitudes and attributes. It is complemented by a wealth of opportunities for students to explore their talents and enjoy new experiences.
At Key Stage 3, Students explore a broad range of subjects, building towards more specialised study when students choose their GCSE options subjects. A copy of the 2022 Option Booklet is available here.
At Key Stage 4, we offer a traditional grammar school curriculum which is tailored to the aptitudes and aspirations of our students and their families. All students at Crossley Heath are strong in the fields of maths and sciences and so everyone studies Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Study of a modern foreign language and a humanity is also required by all students as part of our academic programme of study. We believe that Religious Studies is, along with History and Geography, a valuable academic ‘humanity’ and so students are required to choose at least one humanity from these three subjects.
At Key Stage 5, the majority of our students follow an exclusively A-level programme of study but where appropriate some pupils follow a mixed A-level and vocational programme by studying on subject with our partners at Calderdale College.
We have a thriving House system and aim to ensure that all students take part and can contribute positively towards House activities and achievements. We maintain a strong tradition of charitable fundraising both formally through school events and informally by enabling individuals and groups of students to fund-raise for causes dear to them
At every stage, our aspiration for our curriculum is to:
- instil our core values and make every student feel valued
- maintain breadth at each key stage, ensuring a flexible, coherent progression through their learning journey in order to fully support their ambitions and aspirations
- include a wide range of opportunities beyond the classroom which supports every student, regardless of background, to gain a broader cultural awareness beyond their immediate experience and to make a positive contribution to society.
- ensure a knowledge-rich environment where literacy and numeracy support students to become expert readers and mathematicians; enabling them to flourish as independent learners and critical thinkers competent in analysis.
- give students the necessary knowledge and skills to fully equip them to excel in their external exams.
- encourage students to consider career aspirations at all stages of their school life, to take on challenges and responsibility, to be leaders and work as a team and develop skills which will secure their success in their future careers.
- develop students’ understanding of staying safe, healthy living, relationships, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, British Values, respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.