the north chadderton Pathway

One Pathway with different routes.

We have always adopted a policy of reviewing our pathways to students for each new cycle of the options process, and this year, following the government's Curriculum Review, which was published in November 2025, we again reviewed the offer to students, and have taken the decision to place all students on the same pathway. This further enhances our longstanding policy of having a key stage 4 curriculum offer which is ambitious and inclusive.  As we are a school that adopts the principles of Quality First Teaching, tailored help and support is available as students progress through their key stage 4 GCSE and vocational courses to enable them to achieve highly regardless of their personal circumstances or any barriers to their learning.

Although all our students are on the same pathway, there are many routes each student can choose within that pathway, some students may choose a full suite of academic GCSEs whiilst others will mix GCSEs will vocational learning, some will focus upon literacy based subjects whilst others may opt for more technical or creative subjects,

Whilst all our option subjects remain available for any student to choose, we are aware that students possess different attributes, skills, areas of interest and abilities. We look closely at our students' details, their performance in key stage 3 and at primary school and using our professional judgement we advise individual students on the subjects we consider as more appropriate to their circumstances, as a result using input from our SEND team, we will be asking a small number of our students to choose a vocational subject or a GCSE with high practical or coursework elements for their third option.

All our students will for their first option choose either GCSE History, GCSE Spanish or GCSE Geography. This is becuase the government's Curriculum Review identified these as important subjects as between them, they embed understanding of different cultures, they promote important priorities of media literacy, climate change and the environment, communication and they allow young people to gain insuight into the global world and to evaluate solutions to the problems it faces. They are furthermore highly valued by employers, college tutors and forentry into university due to their high level of transferable skills in communication, confidence, evbaluation and research. Students choosing one of these subjects for their first option, can choose theo others for their second or third option. The following sets out examples of choices different students may take.