At Cornish College we design our curriculum around concepts to educate for a sustainable future. This helps us to develop the critical, creative and conceptual minds of learners through the content we teach.

Our educators use concept-based curriculum design and inquiry learning to foster mindsets of curiosity, critical thinking and enterprise from our youngest learners in the Early Learning Centre through to our Year 12 students. This approach ensures our students become creative, agentic young people who not only have the skills and capabilities to enact change, but possess the self-belief that they can make a difference.

Guided by our Learning Master Plan, our educators design curriculum for deep, transferable and conceptual understandings that help students to build the adaptive capacities required to make sense of and thrive in their world.

The Cornish College Learning Master Plan is based on long-standing beliefs and understandings of the Cornish community, well-founded in research and developed over time through practice.  It also captures a vision for emerging practices, reflecting currency in our culture of growth and continuous reflection that drives us to always question “Education for what?”  How do we continue to best educate for a sustainable future?

The Learning Master Plan
  • Clarifies our vision for education and for schooling
  • Clarifies our vision for quality teaching
  • Ensures consistency of teacher practice (whilst maintaining and valuing autonomy)
  • Clarifies our philosophy on learning
  • Clarifies our vision for continuity of learning (Early Learning Centre through to Year 12)
  • Goes beyond curriculum mapping – to focus on methodology (pedagogy)
  • Moves us further toward a student-directed model of learning fit for 21st century learners (heutagogy – student centred learning)

Just as our Building Master Plan ensures we have a vision for school facilities and helps us to plan appropriate steps in achieving our vision for the school’s physical resources, the Learning Master Plan ensures we are working toward a common goal and common beliefs and understandings in teaching and learning.

The input of staff is essential to the success of our Learning Master Plan as the plan guides our professional learning and practice, ensuring we have the same high expectations of each other as we do of our students. Working collaboratively, we form the relationships required to support each other as we build our collective capacity to ensure we are always working toward our vision of educating for a sustainable future in the best way possible.