(Years 7 - 8)

The transition curriculum is designed to make the transition from primary to secondary school as smooth as possible whilst developing the skills necessary for success at GCSE. A core part of the curriculum is the Opening Minds programmes. Opening Minds is a theme based teaching strategy that develops skills applicable across all subjects such as learning how to learn. We have two models working at the school in the foundation years 

OM Humanities - Geography, History and RE are taught by one teacher who delivers the subjects through themes such as Smart Brain, Conflict, It’s not fair and Global affairs.

OM Arts - Art, music and drama combine to deliver themes. The first theme is the formal elements such as composition, tone and colour, followed by ‘Africa’ and then ‘elements’ where they develop a piece of drama, the music to accompany it and the stage sets.

Subjects are grouped into the Communications and Creative Arts Cluster, the Maths and Humanities Cluster and the Science and Technology Cluster. Each cluster will group pupils in differing ways based on their achievement particularly in the core subject at the heart of each cluster. This means that a student who has high ability in Maths can be in a top set in this cluster to assist them in their continued excellent development in this area, but if they are middle ability in Science and English they will be in appropriate sets in these clusters to provide suitable stretch and support in these areas allowing the teaching and learning to be as personalised as possible. Most classes will be of 28 - 30 pupils but those who have literacy and numeracy development issues will be placed in a set that should have smaller numbers giving them the support and expertise to help them catch-up.

From the summer of 2010 Year 8 students will receive end of 'KS3' teacher assessments.

Year 9: Academic year 09/10 is the final year that Year 9 will be included in what has been known as 'Key Stage 3' at BES. Year 9 students will receive an end of key stage teacher assessed level . There are no longer SATs at the end of 'KS3'.