Lower Secondary students (Years 7-9) follow a curriculum programme that prepares them for IGCSE and the IB Diploma Programme.
Our curriculum content ensures rigour and challenge in developing knowledge and understanding. At the same time, the focus on core competencies enables students to flourish holistically, developing academic practice alongside self-management and critical thinking skills.
Students continue to develop their language proficiency in two or more languages by studying English, French, and German or Spanish.
A strong pastoral PSHE (personal, social, health, and economic) programme, service opportunities, and inter-disciplinary connections are all essential components of our curriculum. Their purpose is to provide students with opportunities to apply their learning authentically, giving them leadership opportunities and empowering them to make connections between their learning and the real world.
Our exclusive ‘Global Campus’ online learning platform enables our students to interact and connect with other Nord Anglia students worldwide through cross-curricular, collaborative projects.
We provide an enriching and exciting Performing Arts programme through our unique collaboration with the Juilliard School. With MIT-Nord Anglia STEAM, students learn how to solve interdisciplinary problems by developing their creativity and problem-solving abilities. Our collaboration with UNICEF encourages our students to make a difference locally and globally by addressing the Sustainable Development Goals.
Core competencies
Our LCIS core competencies complement the core knowledge taught in every subject and develop students’ literacy, numeracy, research, thinking and self-management skills.
As part of our overall literacy strategy, secondary school students are taught to revise and edit their work and develop spelling and vocabulary acquisition skills.
Numerical skills are essential in a wide range of subject disciplines. To develop fluency in this area, we teach students procedural knowledge and incorporate opportunities for practice across the curriculum.
Subject areas in the Lower Secondary Curriculum are:
- Art And Design
- Design Technology
- Drama
- English Language and Literature
- Humanities
- Information Technology (Ict)
- Mathematics
- Music
- Physical Education
Assessment and reporting
In Lower Secondary School, we assess students for the following reasons:
Assessment allows teachers to:
- Determine how students are performing in a subject
- Ensure students know what they need to do to make further progress
- Give students ownership of their learning journeys
- Support students appropriately for those who need it
Students gain clarity about:
- What they are doing well
- What they need to do to progress
Parents benefit from:
- Clarity over how your children are performing in a subject
- Open communication over next steps
How do we assess?
At LCIS, we assess students with a separate set of subject criteria for each of the three years of Lower Secondary. This enables students to seamlessly transition into their IGCSE options as they begin to work towards external qualifications.
To ensure coherence with the 1-9 scale used at IGCSE, we use similar numerical steps for our Lower Secondary assessment and reporting, as well as a ‘level’ indicating the nature of the achievement made that looks like this:
The standards for each subject grade get progressively more challenging from one year to the next, meaning that a student is making:
- good progress if they achieve the same grade in Years 7, 8 and 9 because the standard needed to achieve that grade gets progressively more challenging
- rapid progress if the grade they achieve increases in Years 7, 8 and 9
- insufficient progress if the grade they achieve falls during Years 7, 8 and 9.
