Curriculum Statement

Curriculum Intent for the Trust Primary schools:

We want to give our children the best possible education that we can offer. We want them to be successful and to enjoy learning and to move on to secondary school with the skills, knowledge and understanding that will enable them to thrive as citizens of the 21st century. We want them to be enthusiastic about learning and to be given the skills and knowledge that will open doors to their future educational and life success. We want our children to be caring; resilient and honest with a personal ambition to aspire to do their very best. 

Our curriculum has, at its’ core, the National Curriculum, which we see as the basis on which we have built our Trust curriculum. We passionately believe that an exciting, engaging, and effective curriculum is essential to enable high quality teaching and learning to take place. We have designed our curriculum to ensure that it is based around developing skills and knowledge leading to understanding with concepts becoming embedded in children’s long term memory, enabling them to apply them across the curriculum. Our design allows for cross-curricular teaching, as we believe that this ensures that the content is relevant to pupils and this puts their knowledge into context. 

Curriculum Implementation for the Trust Primary schools: 

We recognise that the school curriculum encompasses all experiences that we offer to the children. We evaluate our school curriculum regularly to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of our children and context. Our curriculum defines what we want our children to know and be able to do by the time they leave our school. 

Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage follow short topics that address the requirements of the EYFS Curriculum, and enable all children to make progress across the three Prime Areas of Learning and four Specific Areas of Learning. In Reception, the children engage in a structured phonics approach which enables them to develop early reading and writing skills. Our EYFS and KS1 curriculum has a strong focus on the basic skills of reading, writing and maths, as we know that children must have a good grasp of these skills in order to make progress across the wider curriculum as they move into KS2. 

Children in KS1 and KS2 follow the school’s bespoke curriculum with a strong focus on the core skills of English and Maths. Our maths and English teaching is well-structured and we are confident that our delivery of the NC in these subjects ensures progression through the core skills. Our broader curriculum of most other subjects is designed by looking at the key skills, knowledge and understanding required by the NC; creating a foundation structure to meet these and then identifying appropriate topics to meet our children’s interests and context that will enable these skills to be taught. 

Topics are designed to be relevant, motivating and engaging for the children and inclusive of all groups of children and individuals across the school.  We use elements of some commercial schemes and our rationale for these is contained within our subject policies. Schools in the Trust have made different choices on commercial schemes to meet their specific needs, but the whole school curriculum provides a coherent model across the four schools. 

Learning outside the classroom is firmly embedded within our school curriculum. Children undertake regular educational visits linked to their Key Skills Curriculum topics, and make use of the school grounds and local area to contextualise and support their learning. Visitors to school are frequent and a regular feature with parents taking part in regular curriculum activities. We also actively support learning at home and share information with parents so that they are able to support and encourage their children outside of school. 

Assessment of the curriculum 

Our assessment processes have been developed over time to encompass both formative and summative assessment processes. These enable us to make accurate judgements of both attainment and progress but we are mindful of teacher workload and endeavour to only collect data that both supports next steps in teaching and learning and guides us to develop our school curriculum. We are using NFER standardised tests for English and Maths and are developing an in-house assessment model for the foundation subjects across the Trust.

Impact of our curriculum 

The impact of our curriculum is to develop well-rounded, confident children who exemplify our school values. Children achieve their personal best and are well prepared to leave us to move to the next stage of their education, ready for the exciting new challenges ahead.