Below is an introduction to our Personal Development program. Please use the links below to explore our entire Personal Development curriculum: 

• Assembly Program
• Achievement and Rewards
• Student Voice and Leadership
• Extra-curricular
• Student Wellbeing
• Altruism
• SMSC and British Values

Personal Development is at the heart of our learning journey. Our mission is to ensure that our students leave KAR as well rounded, confident global citizens, equipped with the character, skills and knowledge they need to succeed personally in the future, and the empathy and understanding of others.

At KAR, we are not only driven to ensure our students achieve academic success, our aim is to also develop their character, personal values, skills and attributes.

The KAR Personal Development Pillars

Our curriculum extends beyond the academic classroom and provides students with broader life experiences to assist in discovering their own interests. At KAR, we celebrate and place a high value on the individuality of our students and the experiences that make them unique. Our hope is that our students are successful, happy and feel part of a community. Our curriculum centres around the five key personal development pillars of Character, Wellbeing and Community, Cultural Capital, Careers and Employability and Equality and Diversity.

The Personal Development Curriculum is a spiralled, sequenced curriculum that aims to develop student understanding and to build confidence in all students so that they feel able to raise issues, question ideas and reflect on their learning, to allow them to develop as well-rounded young people who can contribute meaningfully to the wider community and go on to lead happy, successful and healthy lives. Within this, we have identified the powerful knowledge that students should know within our ambition sheets.

We aim to prepare students for life in modern Britain and create opportunities within our curriculum and additional activities to teach and support the development of all of the British Values. Within these, we aim to:

• Enable students to distinguish right from wrong and to respect the civil and criminal law of Britain
• Encourage students to accept responsibility for their behaviour, show initiative, and to understand how they can contribute positively to the lives of those living and working in the locality of the school and to society more widely
• Enable students to acquire a broad general knowledge of and respect for public institutions and services in Britain
• Further tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions by enabling students to acquire an appreciation for and respect for their own and other cultures.
• Encourage respect for other people, paying particular regard to the protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010.

Our Personal Development Curriculum has, at its foundation, a structured programme of PSHE and RSE (All Year groups), Religion (KS3), and Personal Development Time (PDT) lessons that are timetabled for all Year groups 7-11. This is also complemented with personal development time (PDT) sessions, assemblies and occasional ‘off-timetable’ sessions where pupils receive specialist input from trained professionals (e.g. community police, local businesses) and other organisations/groups (e.g. Colleges, Universities.) This curriculum is planned, monitored and evaluated by the SLT lead for Personal Development and is delivered by a team of specialist teachers.

Enrichment opportunities and educational visits allow students to stretch their horizons and develop an understanding of cultures and destinations beyond our everyday world. Our ‘Super Curriculum’ is part of our embedded, weekly curriculum where students at Key Stage 3 access 70 minutes of enrichment per week. Alongside this, students can discover and showcase their talents through our extensive extracurricular clubs or termly House events that encourage creativity, embrace diversity and foster support for one another.

Our PSHE, RSE & Religion curriculum is progressive, relevant and responsive to student needs. The skills they learn through this are transferable and will support them in whatever path they choose in the future. There are core strands that run through the programme which include relationships and sex education (RSE); mental health and well-being; careers; financial education; drugs and alcohol education; and citizenship.

You can view the full Personal Development Curriculum here.

Model of Delivery

We adopt a spiral curriculum approach to the teaching of personal development, whereby topics are re-visited frequently in increasing depth, in an age and developmentally appropriate manner. We ensure this is tracked via our personal development overview curriculum, found here: 

Personal Development Time (PDT) 

In personal development time, students follow a dedicated character curriculum around our 5 key pillars. This curriculum gives an opportunity to further embed powerful knowledge. 

Years 7-10 follow a sequenced curriculum that includes our reading programme. Year 11 PDT includes revision sessions to prepare students for their GCSE exams.

You can view the PDT programme here.

How do we make sure our curriculum is having the desired impact?

• Developmental drop-ins (DDI’s) of lessons and quality assurance of the Super Curriculum
• Learning walks
• Work scrutiny
• Regular feedback from Teaching Staff during department meetings
• Regular feedback from Middle Leaders during curriculum meetings
• Pupil Surveys
• Parental feedback
• Evaluation of staff CPD and student events

There are three points in the year where students set and review personal targets focussed around the 5 personal development pillars. This supports students in enhancing their character, self-belief and aspirations allowing them to play a positive role within their local and the global community. All students will take an assessment in the personal development curriculum each half term. This is tracked.

We use SIMS data to track the attendance of students at enrichment clubs, workshops, careers events and trips and visits. This ensures we target individuals to ensure all students have an equal amount opportunity to access the student develop curriculum.

Our behaviour data allows us to measure the impact of our personal development strategy and ensure students are making a positive contribution to the school and local community. The data supports us in planning an effective responsive assembly programme as a whole school and for individual groups.

Through termly student and parent surveys regarding the student experience we can adapt our student development curriculum to ensure the needs of all our students are met.

Teacher Level

• Evidenced through regular formative assessment opportunities throughout each lesson.
• Pupil engagement and behaviour in lessons.
• Quality of discussions in lessons.

Leader Level

• Regular lesson drop ins and book looks; including conversations with pupils to talk through their learning/books.
• Feedback from staff during fortnightly departmental meetings.
• Termly pupil voice/focus groups to assess the impact of PD and ensure pupil views are incorporated into curriculum planning
• Participation in groups.

Whole school/community level

• Termly staff voice/focus group (including a broad range of staff across the school) to consider the whole school impact of PD.
• Yearly parent survey to gather information on the impact of PD at home/community and to gain parental views on topics to include in our curriculum.
• Feedback and suggestions from school governors.
• Participation in charity events and community/volunteering opportunities.