Our Curriculum
INTENT
Within our collaboration, we aim to provide children with an inclusive and ambitious curriculum that develops high standards of Reading, Writing and Maths and is specifically tailored and reflective of the local demographics of our schools.
We fulfil all statutory content in line with current guidance as well as ensuring our curriculum is dynamic, diverse and outward facing keeping up to date with society’s social, moral and educational changes.
We are conscious that our schools sit within ex-mining areas and a significant proportion of our children experience high levels of deprivation and financial challenge. Social mobility in Mansfield and Ashfield is extremely low ranking sitting in the bottom 20% of Local Authorities. This results in many of our children having limited experiences of what the wider world can offer them in terms of our rich and diverse society as well as the potential for achieving economic security.
Therefore, a lack of aspiration for future prospective career paths and little knowledge of what interpersonal soft skills future employers will value, are key barriers we must address. Within our progressive curriculum, we provide our children with knowledge-rich experiences of what they need to know and understand. Alongside developing strong sustainable knowledge foundations we also endeavour to equip them with a thirst for their futures. Our ultimate aim is to provide our children with both the knowledge and employable skills they will need to be successful in the next stage of their education and thrive in the world of work.
We also purposely plan our curriculum to include a range of opportunities for our children to be immersed in understanding about people with protected characteristics. This is permeated through positive reinforcement within many aspects of our provision to address and combat prejudice, stereotyping and any other unconscious pre-conceptions that our children may have. Our children intrinsically understand we all welcome diversity wholeheartedly. We want our children to develop their individual identities, empathise with others and feel a strong sense of belonging within their own community. Our aim is to ensure that at our schools everyone is included, valued, respected and well-prepared for an aspirational and successful futures as global citizens in the wider world.
Our two absolutes as our key curriculum drivers are, therefore, Diversity and Future Aspiration.
Our intent is to do this in 2 ways:
IMPLEMENTATION
We plan and deliver our curriculum via Curriculum Vehicles. These are purposely called ‘Vehicles’ as it is key we have a shared understanding that they differ to just being ‘topics’. They are intended to be more than a knowledge based cross curricular topic. They essentially need to also act as the conduit in taking our children on their journey to understanding increasingly more about our 2 Key Drivers Diversity and Future Aspiration.
Each Vehicle is underpinned with clear progression of subject specific knowledge and skills which are planned out from our progression documents across every year group. Curriculum Vehicles are also designed to build towards a purposeful outcome that children have to work together in achieving and which links to an external agent. Ideally the external agent will have more intrinsic involvement than this throughout the journey of the Vehicle work and we are focussed on refining this live link further this academic year. This serves to provide a more tangible real-life connection to employers as the ‘experts’ for our children, opportunities to develop their own personal soft skills and offer much greater purpose to their learning progress.
Vehicle learning, for long, medium, and short term has clear intent and is enhanced with exposure to wider enrichment opportunities for all learners that compliment learning in school. All of this is built upon a number of curriculum key concepts that provide the base for progressive threads of learnt knowledge through each subject area. These are also used as the foci for memory recall prompts within provision that enable children to make links to previously learnt knowledge each time that Vehicles are taught.
Our evolving and developing pedagogy is acutely concentrated on improving access to learning for all learners, supporting children’s memory retention and reducing cognitive load.
Within the shared areas of the school environment, vehicle learning is celebrated for all our learners to refer back to in contrast to ensuring within individual classroom environments we emphasise scaffolding of current learning and newly learnt knowledge.
Children’s immersive learning is enhanced further through a varied range of enrichment opportunities both within our taught curriculum work and through a variety of other opportunities. These include visits, visitors, assemblies, after school clubs, performances, themed days, residential experiences, pupil forums, community and business links/events and liaising with the wider community via social media and online communication.
IMPACT
Our children show intellectual curiosity, questioning the world around them and problem solving. They develop the flexibility to work independently, collaboratively and creatively.
The curriculum enables our students have confidence in their futures. The wisdom, skills, knowledge, relationships and experiences they gain are equipping them for the job market of the future.
Our children learn through the curriculum structure to constantly revisit prior learning, building links to new understanding. They practice and apply these skills by finding opportunities to connect their understanding both within the curriculum and in the wider context.
Our children understand that learning is a process that requires determination and skills. Each child works towards developing to their full potential because staff have strong relationships with them and understand their learning needs. Through swift assessment and intervention, staff ensure all children are challenged.
Our children have a greater understanding and interest about career choices and future opportunities through the real- life links and experiences we bring to them.
Our children show an increasing depth of understanding and maturity about protected characteristics.
If you would like to find out more about the curriculum we follow at Sutton Road Primary School, please contact the school office on 01623 455920 with your specific enquiry and a member of our teaching staff will provide more details.