A rotating programme developing scientific knowledge, practical skills, and analytical thinking across the breadth of living systems — from the molecular machinery of cells to the interdependence of whole ecosystems.
We use an active-learning approach encouraging students to think like biologists, asking how and why living things work and connecting structure to function across every scale of life. Skills are developed through an enquiry-based approach structured around the two papers of the course. Paper 1: cells, organisation, infection and response, and bioenergetics. Paper 2: homeostasis, inheritance, variation, evolution and ecology. Required practicals and skills to work scientifically are woven throughout.
Year 1
The building blocks of life, made visible. From the structures inside cells to the microscopes that reveal them, work explores how bacteria differ from plants and animals, cell division and stem cells, and why microorganisms matter — cultured in the lab. Nothing lives in isolation: work also explores how substances move by diffusion, osmosis and active transport, and how organisms evolved exchange surfaces to keep every cell supplied.
From cells to complex organisms. Work explores how cells form tissues, organs and organ systems, how enzymes drive digestion, and how the digestive and circulatory systems work together to nourish the body.
Work turns to plant tissues and organs — the twin transport systems of xylem and phloem that move water and food through the plant — and to the lifestyle and environmental factors behind non-communicable disease.
What makes us ill, and how we fight back. Work explores how pathogens spread, the body’s defences — from skin to the immune system and vaccination — the medicines we use against disease, and how plants resist attack.
How living things capture and release energy. Work explores photosynthesis and the factors that limit its rate, aerobic and anaerobic respiration — including the fermentation harnessed in brewing and baking — and the body’s response to exercise.
Life in connection. Work explores how energy flows and is lost through food chains, how living and non-living factors shape communities, how human activity threatens biodiversity, and how carbon, water and nutrients cycle endlessly through an ecosystem.
Year 2
Continuing from the summer of Year 1 (first half of term). Work completes the study of ecosystems — how energy and materials cycle, how human activity affects biodiversity and the environment, and how we can monitor and protect the living world around us.
Science lessons are focussed on Chemistry and Physics this term.
Keeping the body in balance. Work explores homeostasis through the nervous and endocrine systems — how we sense and respond, regulate temperature, glucose and water, control reproduction and fertility — and how plants, too, respond to the world through hormones.
The code that builds us — and why no two of us are alike. Work explores DNA, meiosis and how Mendel’s work lets us predict the inheritance of characteristics and disease, then the causes of variation, natural selection and the evidence Darwin and Wallace drew on, and the forces, from selective breeding to extinction, that reshape life over time.
Consolidating the course. Key concepts are revisited and the required practicals are reviewed in depth — methods, variables, results and evaluation — building the confidence to tackle practical-based exam questions.
Year 3
The foundations, revisited for exam mastery. Work consolidates cell structure and division, differentiation and stem cells, microscopy and culturing, and the transport processes — diffusion, osmosis and active transport — that move materials across membranes.
How living things are built and run. Work draws together the principles of organisation, the digestive system and enzyme action, animal and plant tissues, non-communicable disease, and the transport systems that keep plants alive.
Disease and defence in depth. Work explores communicable diseases across humans and plants, the body’s defence systems, vaccines, antibiotics and painkillers, and the discovery of drugs and monoclonal antibodies that push medicine forward.
Science lessons are focussed on Chemistry and Physics this term.
The chemistry of life’s energy. Work explores photosynthesis and the factors that limit it, aerobic and anaerobic respiration, the body’s response to exercise, and the web of reactions we call metabolism.
The final stretch. Revision is active: core concepts revisited, past papers practised, exam technique sharpened — turning three years of biology into confident, exam-ready understanding.
End of Course Exams
Cells; Organisation; Infection and Response; Bioenergetics
Homeostasis; Inheritance; Variation; Evolution and Ecology
