Curriculum Overview

Challenge, Engage and Enrich

Curriculum Intent Statement

The broad and ambitious curriculum that St Olave’s offers for all pupils prioritises engagement, challenge and enrichment.

It seeks to promote a profound and abiding sense of joy in learning, both to enrich the individual and to ensure that they, in turn, might enrich the wider world by sharing their gifts.

All of our pupils are highly able and through our curriculum, we seek to empower all, irrespective of any barriers of challenges they may face, to cultivate and realise the highest aspirations for their futures within and beyond the school, and to embrace skills and knowledge which go above and beyond that which is usually anticipated or required at any given key stage.

Our curriculum is carefully sequenced to ensure that pupils can access new learning from a solid basis of prior learning, that learning is systematically revisited to ensure that key ideas are firmly embedded in the memory, and to enable secure and steady progress as pupils develop in age and ability.

The curriculum at St. Olave’s is built around a strong core of academic subjects and supplemented by a very wide range of co-curricular activities.

On entry to the school, students are taught in mixed ability groups and follow a broad and balanced programme. The Year 7 curriculum includes Art, Design and Technology, Drama, English, French, German or Spanish, Geography, History, Computing, Latin, Mathematics, Music, PE, Games, RS and Science. In Year 8, students are able to choose a second modern foreign language or continue with Latin.

Having completed their enriched Key Stage 3 National Curriculum studies by the end of Year 8, in Year 9 our pupils focus on studying an enriched curriculum in the subjects which they will be taking to GCSE. The enhanced curriculum time they receive for each subject in Year 9 enables, for instance, far greater scope for practical laboratory work in the three Sciences, and affords scope for pupils to study a wider range of texts from culturally diverse backgrounds (which are not on the GCSE specification) in English. These enrichment priorities are designed to support our students’ typical aspirations for further study and to meet the needs of the wide cultural demographic of our pupil cohort. All compulsory subjects and all options subjects offer an enriched curriculum in Year 9 which paves the way for success in pupils’ GCSE courses in Years 10 and 11.

All students take six and a half compulsory subjects of Mathematics, English Language, English Literature, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and short course RS; and choose a further four subjects from a group of options. At St. Olave’s, students are required to study either Geography or History (or both) and all students must study a language. Beyond these constraints, however, the students are given a free choice, with the school trying its very best to accommodate every subject combination. Some students progress to take the Additional Mathematics qualification in Year 11. Every year many students apply to take the Higher Project Qualification, which provides them with the opportunity to study a non-curricular subject in depth. Non-examined courses are offered in PE, RSHE and Citizenship.

The Sixth Form curriculum is centred on A-Levels and supplemented by a varied elective programme. All students entering Year 12 will opt for at least four subjects and many opt to study Further Mathematics as well.  One of the four subjects will be studied only to AS Level and will be examined in the summer of Year 12 (where an AS exam is available). Students will confirm the subject they are taking to AS Level in the first half of Year 12. 

Typically, students will then continue with the remaining three subjects (or four, if studying Further Mathematics), into Year 13 to study at A Level, which will be examined in the summer of Year 13.  Many also apply to take the Extended Project Qualification.

No restrictions are placed on subject combinations and the school tries hard to accommodate every student's preference. Every student benefits from individual mentoring, with tutors available to support and guide each student through their Sixth Form experience.

Information relating to the curriculum content of individual subjects offered to future Olavians at the next point of entry, is available via our:

'Subject' information links

Information regarding the courses current Olavian cohorts follow (together with Assessment & Feedback processes), is available below:

From Autumn Term 2024

Curriculum Information for Current Cohorts: 2024-25

Academic Curriculum: 2024-2025

Curriculum Diagram: 2024-2025

Curriculum Policy: 2024-2025

Policies relating to Homework and Assessment & Feedback can to found HERE