Middle (Year 4 and 5)
Key Stage 4
For some time now leading educational thinkers have put forward the view that the organisation of the curriculum of the l4 to 16 year old made it possible to have too much specialisation too early. In order to achieve a ‘broad and balanced’ curriculum at the RGS, every boy will be continuing until the end of his fifth year with some study of each of the following “areas of learning”:
- Aesthetic, creative and literary moral, spiritual
- Human, social physical
- Linguistic scientific, technological
- Mathematical
The National Curriculum, enshrined in the 1988 Education Act, also seeks to safeguard these areas of learning for all pupils.
The 40 periods in the week are therefore allocated as follows:
| Mathematics | 4 |
| Physical Education | 1 |
| Games | 3 |
| Religious Education | 1 |
| Monday Eight (CCF, DoE, Outdoor Pursuits or Scouts) | 1 |
| Tutor Period | 1 |
| Total | 11 |
In addition there are options which can be selected by each pupil.
| Aesthetic | Humanities | Languages | Science and Technology |
| English* | History | French* | Science* |
| Art | Geography | German | Technology |
| Music | Religious Studies | Latin | |
| Greek | |||
| Spanish |
One subject must be chosen from each block (compulsory subjects are denoted by * above), four periods being allocated to each subject except Science, which has 9 periods. Under this scheme the total number of compulsory periods is 11 plus 17 from (the compulsory aspect of) the option scheme (English, French and Science) making a total of 28 periods. This leaves 12 periods, or 3 options to be chosen, one of which has to come from the Humanities option block. The RGS policy is that breadth of education to sixteen is achieved for all of our pupils, by following the scheme outlined above.
All boys will take a minimum of ten GCSEs: Mathematics, English Literature, English Language, French, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and three others.