CURRICULUM STATEMENT

 

Reviewed:

26.02.2024

Review Date:

31.02.2026

 

Our Curriculum Intent:

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.  We want them to be enthusiastic about learning and our curriculum is our means of offering this.  As a church school, our work is underpinned by our core Christian values, outlined fully in our curriculum policy. We want our children to be caring; resilient and honest with a personal ambition to do their very best. It is our belief that everyone should be treated in a way that we would wish to be treated.  We want to support our children to learn to make the right choices, which are becoming ever more important in the world of social media.

 

Our curriculum has, at its’ core, the National Curriculum, which we see as the basis on which we have built our St Anne’s curriculum, that is what we believe is relevant to children. 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.  Where possible, cross-curricular teaching is embedded as we believe that this ensures that the content is relevant to pupils and this puts their knowledge into context.

 

Curriculum Implementation:

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.

 

At St Anne’s, children in the Early Years Foundation Stage follow short topics that address the requirements of the EYFS Curriculum, and enable all children to make at least expected 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 curriculum delivered through termly topics. Cross-curricular links are made wherever possible. Children across Key Stage One and Key Stage Two take part in daily Mathematics and English lessons to support them in meeting or exceeding the Age-Related Expectations of the National Curriculum. Our Maths and English teaching are well-structured and understood by all staff. 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. For example, in History, we have identified the key skill of learning about changes within living memory and then matched this to a topic on families where parents and grandparents came into school and designed family trees.

 

Subjects are taught as discrete subjects but linked to the over-arching topic if appropriate. We use elements of some commercial schemes and our rationale for these is contained within our subject policies, for example, Charanga is used to support our Music teaching as it provides both the model of progression and the technical expertise that we do not have in our current staff team.

 

Learning outside the classroom is firmly embedded within our school curriculum. Our school is within a relatively small and isolated village and it is important that we give children experiences of the wider world as part of our curriculum. 40% of our children are out-of-catchment children, which is one element that we have considered when designing the curriculum. Children undertake termly 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, for example, our children can access “Active learn” - an on line resource from home to support Maths. Our relationship with parents is critical in supporting our children as they develop as citizens of the 21st century. 

 

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.

 

Impact of our curriculum

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