West Exe School has engineered a wide and varied curriculum. However, underpinning its diversity is a bedrock of literacy and numeracy.

In 2022 72% of our students left West Exe with a grade 5 or better in Maths or  Maths achieving the highest progress score in the South West region

Summer 2022 results 

All students are tested for their reading age and mathematical ability upon entry. 

Students that have a reading age somewhat lower than expected will receive bespoke literacy intervention through the Lexia package and 1-1 sessions with a trained literacy TA. We know that reading is essential for success across the curriculum, not just in English, so we provide dedicated reading time time within English lessons, where students can focus on their comprehension and reading fluency.  Reading also forms part of our extended practice for all year groups. 

Sparx, our maths and reading educational software, provides targeted reading, questioning and support at exactly the right challenge level for all. This ensures all students are sufficiently challenged but also supported to make excellent progress through their time at West Exe School.  

 Every teacher is a teacher of literacy and numeracy: staff are armed with students' reading ages and tailor curriculum reading material to suit the needs of the students, as well as utilising literacy marking codes to improve students' written communication across all subjects. 

Everything we do at West Exe is research informed. 

We believe that through hard work all pupils can improve their understanding and be successful.  Our aim is to support our pupils to develop a long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of mathematics. This is achieved through developing their fluency, mathematical reasoning and the ability to solve unfamiliar problems.  Examination results are key to ensuring all students are able to take the next step in their educational and life journey. However, we also believe that supporting our students to develop skills in problem-solving and reasoning will enable them to achieve more than just academic success. These key threads run through the heart of our mathematics curriculum at West Exe. Our spiral curriculum allows students to learn the key concepts and processes identified within the National Curriculum and then engage with them at a deeper level every year throughout their 5-year journey.

We want all of our pupils to be able to take the next step in their educational and life journey through gaining the right skills and qualifications for success through achieving their best.  It is more than just examination results: it also encompasses the problem-solving and mathematical reasoning skills that run throughout the mathematics curriculum at West Exe.

The Canon

A literary canon is a collection of texts which hold significant value: both in the style of writing and in the messages that they give. We pondered long and hard over which books would hold significance for our students at West Exe. By the time they leave us, our students will have read 26 magnificent, thought-provoking and hopefully, life changing texts during tutor time: books that will bring depth, colour and culture to their lives; books that allow them to see the world from many varying perspectives and bring a greater understanding of the way the world works; books that will be a pleasure to read.