SOCIAL SCIENCES STATEMENT

Our vision in Social Sciences is to enrich our students, to make better sense of the world that they live in.

In Social Sciences, we aim to enhance our students’ knowledge and understanding of the world by delivering a curriculum that considers content from the specification, yet making real links to the wider society that the students’ belong to and recognise. By adopting this approach, students engage more with the topics, building their confidence, have a deeper understanding of the content and are keen to achieve. This instils the philosophy of Westfield Academy: to Believe, Strive and Achieve.

To ensure that all of our students thrive in our courses, all subjects within the Social Sciences faculty begin with a ‘Foundations’ topic that introduces all learners to basic terminology and key theories that act as a baseline for each subject. This takes place at both KS4 and KS5, to ensure all students are able to access the course and reach their full potential.  We then build upon this, layering students' knowledge sequentially to suit the needs of our students. To solidify what students have grasped, connections between other subjects are made to increase the depth of their understanding.

There is a smooth transition between our KS4 and KS5 curriculums. The delivery of the KS5 courses is designed to revisit some aspects of the KS4 criteria to enable those that are new to the courses to progress; students then delve deeper into further analysis of these topics. Students at all key stages receive a variety of learning opportunities, from guest speakers, visits to museums and care homes, to building links between students and local hospitals to volunteer in their spare time. This all serves to aid the personal development of our students; this is a strength of our curriculum.

The core skills that students adopt in Social Sciences are:

• Building knowledge and understanding of key perspectives in Psychology and Sociology
• The application of knowledge to a range of contexts
• Analysis of theoretical ideas
• Interpretation of data and research
• Evaluation of theories
• Practical application of concepts to our everyday lives

The development of these core skills permits our students to successfully progress to Higher Education, whereby 48% of students who studied a Social Science subject at Westfield Academy continued their educational journey in a Social Science field.