Curriculum

At Moorside, we’re all about excellence! We inspire our students to achieve beyond the limits they thought possible. With a strong focus on academic achievement, we offer opportunities that empower our students to succeed. We set ambitious goals to surpass expectations and excel beyond imagination.

Our curriculum goes beyond the classroom. We develop skills such as critical thinking, creativity, resilience, and adaptability to enable students to succeed. Students engage in a range of enrichment opportunities that challenge and inspire.

Students enjoy and engage in school, leaving Moorside with a strong moral compass rooted in the British values of mutual respect, tolerance, and personal responsibility. We empower our students to make a positive impact in their local, national  and global communities.

Minimum Expected Grades

Understanding the progress pupils are making is vitally important for parents. At Moorside High School each pupil is given a minimum expected grade (MEG) for each subject. We do not set target grades, these place a ceiling on expectation.

Minimum Expected Grades are the lowest grade your child should be aiming for. We want all our students to exceed these. This is created by the Fischer Family Trust and represents the minimum expectation a student should achieve if they attended one of the top 20% of schools in the country. These are recorded on students exercise books, as an indicator to help pupils to continually judge their performance after each assessment.

If at any point a pupil is achieving less than their MEG, teachers are guided to put in place interventions to support improvement. Some interventions may be targeted at an individual child, whilst others may be targeted to manage a common misconception, or key skill area for a larger group. These interventions can take place in class, or in an extra session in the pupil and staff members

Reporting

We formally report to parents three times a year via Arbor. We report the MEG for each subject and a Professional Predicted Grade. The Professional Predicted Grade is the grade your child’s teacher expects they will achieve based on their current attainment, effort and attendance. Comparing these grades will help you understand what your child is in line to achieve alongside what you might reasonably expect.

The website curriculum area has learning journeys for every subject, which can support pupils and parents in understanding how the curriculum content is sequenced. These can also be found in the front of all pupil exercise books. Pupils record their MEG on this learning journey and set themselves an aspirational grade they would like to achieve.

Academic Mentoring

Academic support is provided in lessons and through tutor time. After each assessment point, the teacher will discuss the progress being made with your child. Targets will be set to address any areas for improvement or further extension. This process is supported by the Form Tutor and Head of Year, who will place pupils onto a progress plan where appropriate. This is an opportunity for the form teachers to praise and reward each pupil for areas of great progress and discuss how they have achieved this, as well as if such strategies could be used to support area of development.

Students on the SEN Register who require additional 1:1 tutoring to meet their needs may be withdrawn from specific lessons to access support from SENSS tutors, teaching assistants or Dyslexia Institute staff.  These periods will be negotiated with staff and where possible withdrawal from a specific subject will not take place for periods longer than a half-term block.   Additionally, pupil premium pupils may also receive 1:1 tutoring for English and Maths, which will be negotiated in a similar way.