Guiding Principle & Beenfits
All student groupings are designed to provide students with the most effective support and challenge.
They are given with the full range of opportunities and curriculum content to prepare for future success, including at Sixth Form, university, apprenticeships, work, and life as a responsible citizen.
- Students benefit from consistent, high quality teaching in every group. As they move through the school further breadth and personalisation is introduced for Key Stage 4 and 5.
- Communication between tutors and teachers is aided in earlier years by the same groupings for the majority lessons and tutor sessions.
- Personal Development and support for reading is further aided through our rich tutor time sessions being strudctured around students of a similar age and level of development. This helps ensure appropriate challenge, support and focus in lessons and tutor time.
If you have any questions about your child's academic progress or groupings please contact enquiries@tgschool.net so your question can be directed to the person best placed to respond.
Lessons in Years 7 to 9
All students have access to a strong core of creative, practical and relevant lessons to give a strong and consistent foundation before preferences for personalised subjects are made for Years 10 and 11.
For students in Years 7 to 9 they have the following lessons each week:
- English (4)
- Maths (4)
- Science (3)
- History (2)
- Geography (2)
- Physical Education (2)
- Computing (1)
- Technology & Food (1)
- Personal Development including Religion, Philosophy & Ethics (1)
- Music (1)
- Drama (1)
- Art (1)
- Languages of French, German or Spanish or Latin combined with a Modern Foreign Language (2)
Reading Support
For some students their modern foreign language may be replaced in full or in part with a bespoke reading curriculum delivered by specialists to help them improve their reading ability. This provides with a strong reading foundation to support their progress scross the rest of their curriculum.
Depending on their progresss in reading as students move from Year 7 and 8 more of them are then given access to foreign language teaching.
Age appropriate Personal Development and Reading is also delivered to every student as part of our Tutor time programme.
Student Tutor Groupings
Students are placed in tutor groups to best support their personal and academic progress. These 10 groups are in 3 populations named T, G and S.
Populations T and S are of equivalent prior attainment, balanced for gender and to provide opportunities for students, where possible, to study a language of their preference.
Within each population there are 3 or 4 groups, named TT, TH, TO and GM, GA and GS and SG, SA, SI, SN.
Typically groups in SG to SN are slightly smaller to provide even more time and support to help students reach high level of academic performance.
Groupings for Lessons
In Years 7 & 8, and for some subjects in Year 9, tutor groups are also the groupings used for students' lessons.
In Years 10 & 11, students are either in their option classes or grouped by subject leaders in maths, English and Science.
Languages and Technology classes in Key Stage 3 are grouped within the student popoulations T, G and S to give students some choice over which language to study and also smaller technology groups for practical lessons. PE is usually grouped across all or part of a student population T, G or S.
Decisions on groupings are reviewed regulalry, and particularly as students reach the end of Year 8, and when they start Year 10.
Each block in the graphic below shows where students are grouped differently for each subject.
For example, in Years 7 & 8 students are taught for most of the time in their tutor groupings to maximise the opportunities to deepen relationships, be provided appropriate support and challenge, and for the tutor and teachers to most effectively communicate and support students progress.
In Years 9 students start to be grouped differently within each student population. These grouping decisions are made by subject leaders for maths, English and science considering the progress students have made in Years 7 and 8, as well as their performance in recent standardised tests and Key Stage 2 national tests.
Preferences for Subjects in Key Stage 4 (Years 10 & 11)
Our range of subjects to choose from in Year 10 is extensive and students can make preference for 4 subjects to study in Years 10 & 11. These preferences are made in January of Year 9.
In Years 10 & 11 students then have 3 lessons of each of their 4 preferred subjects, in addition to 4 lessons each of maths, English and science, and a weekly lesson of Physical Education.
Whichever population students are in during Key Stage 3 they can make preferences from the same list of available subjects. Each year the range of courses provided will be affected by numbers of students prefering a course, staff availability and the construction of the timetable which is designed to give as many students as possible access to their preferred courses.
Full information about our range of options in Year 10 please see our website at www.tgschool.net/ks4-options
Some of the courses available to students in populations TG and S may be different to best accomodate differing student preferences.
Apart from where tiering is used in science, Maths and languages there is no limit to what students can achieve in any class.
Grouping Decisions & Reviews
Grouping decisions are based on a combination of standardised assessments, information from teachers on recent progress and consideration of individual identified needs, to best support and challenge students through tutoring and in every lesson.
Decisions are reviewed regularly, usually as part of our achievement cycles and as students reach the end of year and new students are enrolled.