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Parliament Hill

High Achieving andHappy

Learning & Curriculum Introduction

Parliament Hill School is a high-achieving and happy school where we strive to promote a culture of lifelong learning. 



Our PHS curriculum:

  • promotes a love of learning and engages students' curiosity in the wider world
  • provides carefully sequenced subject schemes of learning which enable students to build confidence and deepen their knowledge and skills
  • develops learners who are literate, numerate and able to communicate their learning with a variety of audiences, supporting and challenging one another
  • develops learners who use their knowledge and skills to be creative, inventive and resourceful. Provides opportunities to investigate problems and find solutions
  • strengthens resilience and builds independence through the skilful use of assessment, support and high challenge
  • actively teaches students to make healthy, safe and moral choices, providing physical and mental well-being and valuing diversity
  • enables all students to succeed and benefit from equality of opportunity; builds social and cultural understanding, nurtures active citizenship and delivers social justice in today's world

Learning and teaching at PHS:

We want out students to become independent learners able to fully benefit from the opportunities of a lifetime of learning ahead of them. We recognise that in order to do this we will need to provide high challenge and will also need to support and scaffold this development along the way. We want our students to become learners who can take risks, make mistakes and use these to move forward. We want our students to be able to use their knowledge and skills powerfully, to ask questions, search for solutions and to be able to make a positive contribution to the world around them.

We want our students to become true Parli Learners.

Parli Learners:

  • Work hard: we show active interest in our lessons, make an effort to engage and ask questions about our learning. We bring energy to our lessons and learning.
  • Are ready to learn: we arrive on time to our lessons with our equipment and always maximise our learning time. We try to be as organised as possible and make good use of home learning time as well.
  • Practise: we review our learning regularly, we revise for assessments and use our home learning time to practise and develop our knowledge and skills.
  • Act on feedback: we listen to advice from teachers and friends, we redraft and CRAFT our work, we learn from examples of excellent work and we always look to improve our work.
  • Make mistakes: we take risks, push ourselves and say 'I can't do it … yet'. We persist when it gets difficult because we know that is when we are really learning. 
  • Apply our learning to new problems, search for solutions and ask even more questions - 'what if …?'
  • Share what we have learned: we communicate our ideas fully, present our arguments clearly and give advice and feedback to others.
  • Respect others: we know when it is time to listen and when it is time to contribute. We know sometimes we work alone and sometimes with others but we always support one another on our learning journey.

Teaching at Parliament Hill School:

  • We value the very positive relationships here at PHS and actively work to help students develop those positive, supportive social skills which enable lessons to be secure, productive learning environments.
  • We know that, however experienced, we are constantly improving and model this attitude to the students. We model meta-cognitive and self-regulatory techniques for students to develop them as independent learners.
  • We value and develop our subject specific expertise and know that collaboration helps us all to develop our explanations, resources and subject specific pedagogy. We work together in subject teams and across disciplines to develop our teaching skills together.
  • We use assessment to provide opportunities for success and skilfully challenge and scaffold students' progress. We use skilful questioning and frequent assessment for learning in lessons to provide feedback and  enable us to teach responsively.
  • We are reflective practitioners and support one another to develop as teachers and thrive as colleagues.

Home learning:

See the Home learning Policy.

  • Supports and extends learning in the classroom;
  • Provides regular opportunities for practice and skills development;
  • Allows students to prepare for future learning, review past learning and develop effective revision skills;
  • Enables students to learn how to organise their time and helps to builds their independence as a learner;
  • Allows students to pursue their own learning passions and share those with home and their teachers;
  • Provides opportunities for learning discussions at home and helps parents and carers to keep in contact with their child's learning journey.

Curriculum enquiries:

For any enquiries regarding the curriculum we follow, please contact

Deborah O’Connor, Deputy Headteacher doconnor@parliamenthill.camden.sch.uk