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The Queenswood curriculum seeks to balance the demands of breadth and depth. We believe that the activities on offer prepare girls coherently and relevantly to become influential women of the future.
We try to differentiate wherever possible, matching tasks and responsibilities to individuals and balancing challenge with the likelihood of success in each case. What emerges from this principle is variety and variation of teaching approaches and classroom organisation. Expectation, and this is rightly very high in the minds of many of our girls, is always tempered with realism. |
Specialisation, we believe, should not be pursued at the expense of a broad range of 'life skills'. Conversely, the concept of a broad education should be allowed neither to constrain individual academic passion nor to shackle inspiration. We seek to identify, cultivate and celebrate excellence in each individual girl; on this basis, girls exceed all expectations.
Advice about academic and career choices is readily available through the school's systems of individual monitoring: girls are helped at each stage to maintain a flexible attitude to learning and to make
informed decisions.
All members of the school community are expected to recognise the importance of a shared experience - an experience of mutual respect between teachers and learners. To this end we seek to promote the view that learning should be enjoyable, exciting, rewarding and confidence-building.
A common curriculum is followed in Years 7, 8 and 9 including: Art & Design; Design Technology;
Drama; English; French; Geography; History; ICT; Mathematics; Music; PE; RS and Science. In Year 8 Italian, Spanish and Japanese are introduced. Also in Year 8, girls start using their laptop computers and may take an OCR examination in touch typing and keyboard skills.
The following compulsory subjects are followed in Years 10 and 11: English, English Literature, French, Mathematics, PE and Science. In addition, girls may choose two or three GCSE subjects from the following: Art & Design, Design Technology, Drama, Geography, History, ICT, Italian, Japanese, Music, PE, Spanish and RS. Girls who do not opt for ICT or RS follow GCSE short (or half) courses.