PBL isn’t always the easy route. It’s an off-road journey - hard at times but the experience and skills make it worthwhile.
Not all schools have the luxury of designing a modern, student-centred curriculum from scratch. However, as a new school founded in 2021, Livingstone Academy Bournemouth (LAB) has had the rare opportunity to shape an educational journey around learners’ needs rather than the system’s.
For years, English education policy has centred on progress measures. These have their place, but they create a narrow focus on exams while failing to capture the complete picture of what makes a young person ready for life. When employers lament the lack of essential skills among school leavers and university graduates, it isn’t because young people are incapable. It’s because they haven’t had the opportunity to develop these skills in the first place.
As the youngest school in the Aspirations Academies Trust, we’ve developed an educational approach that ensures future generations stand out for more than formal qualifications. That’s what makes LAB different. At our heart is the development of ‘Power Skills’ – communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving. These underpin our No Limits Curriculum, which threads through our entire curriculum from primary to GCSE. From primary onwards, our curriculum focuses on applied learning. Key Stage 2 introduces 'LAB Technicals' – a structured set of nine specialist-led projects over 27 weeks. From Years 3 to 6, learners explore disciplines from woodworking and textiles to coding, debating, science, music, and photography. Projects primarily focus on developing technical know-how and fluency. In woodworking, for example, students start by hammering nails into wood and using elastic bands to spell out their names.
Alongside practical skills, the focus is on building confidence, independence, and creative thinking – developing a fundamental baseline that learners build upon as they progress through the school. Moving into Key Stage 3, the foundational skills students learned in primary feed into 'Creator Space' – a series of more advanced, interdisciplinary projects weaving together technical knowledge and power skills. Each year takes on a different challenge - Year 7 students design a sustainable city in Minecraft using science to build working paper circuits and simulated energy systems, Year 8 explores product design, with students crafting wooden toys, designing logos, and using vector software to laser-etch their branding and Year 9 goes fully digital, using CAD, 3D printing, and VR to create original board games.
Creator Space classes are capped at 15 students, allowing teachers to help learners develop high-functioning teams. We scaffold collaboration so they learn to distribute roles effectively – key preparation for the Higher Project Qualification (HPQ) in Year 10. Students also use thinking sheets to track their decision-making, a tool that strengthens their learning, assessment and peer feedback skills – again, seeding future skills. Finally, in Key Stage 4, every student completes an HPQ on their chosen topic. This might be a research essay, an artefact with commentary, or a dissertation-style project with a presentation. It is always student-led, and students gain a nationally recognised Level 2 qualification (equal to a GCSE) as well as vital experience applying the power skills they’ve been developing since Year 3. This progression isn’t accidental. We’ve deliberately identified the capabilities students need for independent project work at 16 and then designed every stage before that to build towards it. LAB Technicals, Creator Space, and the HPQ form a coherent learning journey.
National data shows that Year 7 is often a crisis point, with attendance falling and suspensions rising as pupils progress through Key Stage 3. To avoid this, LAB has carefully designed a secondary transition programme that sees Year 7 students maintaining a single teacher for four hours each morning, covering English, maths, and the humanities – mirroring primary school structures. Then, after lunch, they move to specialist subjects like tech, music, art, PE, and Creator Space. This model blends the best of both worlds, and it works: our Year 7 attendance is 96% and suspensions are just 0.6%, a significantly better picture than the national average. This isn't effortless – it takes planning, structure, and training. But it’s worthwhile. Students feel a sense of belonging: safe, seen, and supported to learn.
The model has been so effective that we’ve gradually extended its principles into Year 8 and Year 9, further easing the secondary transition. This gradual approach sets our children up for success in Key Stage 3, as our data shows. In all year groups, both attendance and suspension rates are significantly better than the national average. Other schools in the Trust are now developing the model, too. And as LAB grows, we’re thinking hard about how to preserve that “small school” feel, creating pastoral systems that scale without losing what makes them powerful. We’re excited to have a sixth form on the horizon, offering the Extended Project Qualification, and we’re even looking at what opening a pre-school might involve.
We’re very lucky – we’ve been free to innovate. But we’re not working alone. All academies in the Trust fully embrace the No Limits Curriculum, with LAB showing the extent of what’s possible.
The Trust’s direction is clear: whole-child development, strong academic outcomes, and school leavers who stand out for all the right reasons - confident, capable learners who are ready to take initiative – whether in education, employment, or beyond.
Written by
Loren Tharme, Principal and Kaitlin Cavaciuti, Director of Applied Learning at Livingstone Academy Bournemouth