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The Curriculum: an overview

The College's curriculum broadly follows and extends the National Curriculum to allow for a proper combination of breadth and specialisation. There are five yeargroups split between Upper and Lower Schools.

Lower School

Age

Upper School

Age

 

Shell

13 - 14

Lower Sixth

16 - 17

Remove

14 - 15

Upper Sixth

17 - 18

Hundred

15 - 16

 

During the Shell year, pupils maintain the broadest possible curriculum in order to introduce them to the range of subjects available at Marlborough and options are kept to a minimum.

In the Remove and Hundred years, pupils embark on examination courses, mostly to GCSE, based on a compulsory core of English, Mathematics, Science, a modern foreign language, Physical Education and Religious Studies, accompanied by a range of optional subjects.

In the Upper School, the curriculum is based on AS and A level as entry qualifications for Higher Education. Throughout the school, the curriculum is supported by a wide range of academic extension and enrichment activities through societies, lectures, theatre trips, museum and gallery visits, debates, poetry readings, conferences and concerts creating a full co-curriculum which recognises that qualifications alone do not produce a broadly educated person.