Curriculum Intent | What is the PACE curriculum?

At Co-op Academy Florence MacWilliams, our PACE curriculum aims to provide our students with the powerful knowledge, skills, and qualities they need to unlock their potential, enabling them to be physically healthy and mentally well citizens of modern Britain who actively contribute to society and know how to keep themselves and others safe. Our PACE curriculum is ambitious, broad, and balanced. It includes expert teaching on all elements of personal development within the academy, covering all relevant guidance from the Department for Education, supporting our culture of academic excellence and character development for all. At Co-op Academy Florence MacWilliams we define strong character as the good decisions we make, even when no one is watching. We further codify this as our PACE principles: Pride, Ambition, Care and Excellence for self, school and city. Through these principles, we teach all students the importance of making the right decisions at the right times for the right reasons.

The PACE curriculum at Co-op Academy Florence MacWilliams aims to:

• Form a spiral curriculum structured around three key strands: Physical Health and Mental Wellbeing, Living in the Wider World, Relationships.
• Place safeguarding at its heart, supported through core concepts, including the fundamental British values, equality, diversity, and inclusion. 
• Build in complexity over time whilst remaining age-appropriate. At each level, the curriculum is interleaved and explicitly links to prior and future learning, building a deep conceptual understanding of the powerful knowledge by maximising the potential of memory and retention. Beyond the statutory content, we prioritise content that will have the most positive impact on our specific community based on community voice. Living in the wider world includes part of our offer for careers education, information, advice and guidance, ensuring students are provided with up-to-date information about all future pathways available to them. 
• Be fundamentally guided by our academy PACE principles and create the conditions for our students to reflect on and clarify their own personal values, considering fundamental British values and those of the Co-op Academies Trust. Through careful sequencing of complex and conflicting points of view, our community conversations offer an opportunity to debate in a safe environment with clear ground rules linking to our principles of community and respect. 
• Support all students to unlock their potential, regardless of academic, societal, or economic starting point, to take their ambitious next steps in life with the powerful knowledge, support, and guidance needed for success.
• Develop the literacy and reading of our students through our text-rich PACE curriculum to further prepare them for life in modern Britain.