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Inspection report 2010
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Curriculum
The heartbeat of the school is a broad curriculum which stretches the brightest, includes ‘hard’ subjects and is focused on preparing students for the future.
Challenge
The Lower School curriculum is broad and stimulating. Pupils are taught by subject specialists, often in specialist classrooms and laboratories, and establish learning habits which will take them to GCSE and beyond.
Some subjects are familiar from primary school. Others seem quite different. Biology, Chemistry and Physics are taught separately throughout the school, and always in purpose-built laboratories; Latin is new for almost everyone. We aim to encourage a love of learning and the confidence to rise to new intellectual challenges.
Perse pupils are trained to think independently and to engage constructively with a diverse and complex world. They may be reflective thinkers in one lesson, collaborative team-workers in the next. The Upper is an exciting place of energy and ideas.
Breadth
A broad-based curriculum is essential for balanced intellectual development. The Upper therefore provides a wide core of compulsory subjects to GCSE, including three separate sciences and a modern foreign language. Pupils make guided subject choices in Year 9 and Year 10.
Pupils are valued as individuals who progress at different rates, and require increasingly flexible learning opportunities, including early Maths IGCSE qualifications for many.
‘The unexamined life is not worth living.”
We do not believe that Socrates had GCSEs in mind when he said those words, and we are also passionate about our non-examined curriculum! This includes the opportunity to learn new languages outside the usual curriculum such as Japanese.
Flexibility
Flexibility and opportunities for specialisation are the watchwords of the Sixth Form curriculum. Most students study four subjects to AS, and three subjects to A2 (five at AS and four at A2 for some of the brightest).
The advantage of A levels and the new Pre-U qualification is the great freedom that students have to construct their own curriculum – either focused on preparation for specific university courses, or spanning the Arts / Humanities / Sciences divide.
Innovation
The Upper has been a pioneer of international IGCSEs, now followed in the majority of subjects, finding that these are in some cases more rigorous and offer a better preparation for further study than conventional GCSEs.
The Cambridge Pre-U is a new, high quality qualification which we currently offer in Music and Psychology, and in Physics as an optional alternative to A levels. Pre-U is an alternative to A levels, developed by examination boards in conjunction with universities, and offering rigorous and innovative linear courses. Perse teachers have been closely involved in developing several Pre-U specifications. Our first cohorts of Music and Psychology students have completed the Pre-U instead of A level, with great success.
Increasing numbers of Sixth Formers are also studying for the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), building their research skills and developing specific intellectual interests. The success of that initiative has led to our introduction of the GCSE equivalent, the Higher Project, in Years 10 and 11.
