Our Curriculum Rationale

We aim to provide a safe, happy, caring environment where children learn to respect themselves, others, their own community and the wider world.  We aim to develop an enthusiasm and enjoyment for learning and to provide a wide, broad and engaging curriculum and learning experiences. The curriculum is underpinned by our values for life and the requirements of the National Curriculum.  These are the seven principles upon which our curriculum is designed:

• Progression – we aim for every child to make very good progress and to reach their potential, being “secondary ready” by the time they reach Year 5 and 6.
• Enjoyment – every child should be able to enjoy learning new ideas, knowledge and skills.
• Challenge  – we aim to provide challenge so all children develop resilience and continue to make progress by developing the capacity to think conceptually, ask questions and make links between and apply their knowledge and understanding.
• Personalisation  – by tailoring teaching and learning to cohorts and individual learning styles, we aim to encourage children to become self-motivated, self-regulating, creative and independent learners.
• Coherence and relevance  – making use of both discrete teaching and learning of core subjects and an inter-disciplinary approach, we aim to help the children make links in their learning so they can develop a sense of the world, be able to rationalise and problem-solve.
• Celebration  – successes, progress, individual and team/community successes are celebrated and held in high esteem to encourage self-confident learners who are willing to try hard for personal success and to support others in their learning journey.
• Spiritual and moral development

As a Church of England school, and in line with the Church of England’s Education Office, we aim to support pupils in developing their understanding of Christianity, as a contribution to their understanding of the world and their own experience within it.

Our aim is to develop pupils’ abilities to connect, critically reflect upon, evaluate and apply their learning to their own growing understanding of religion and belief (particularly Christianity), of themselves, the world and human experience.

Classes and Curriculum organisation
In our Church school the cohort sizes can be small and vary in many ways.  This necessitates a fluid, flexible approach to groupings, classes and timetabling of curricular subjects.  The abilities, learning styles and any additional needs are paramount and so long term, medium term and weekly/daily curriculum plans are regarded as working documents, frequently under review and altered as necessary to best meet the needs of the children, making the best use of resources available.

The provision of varied, exciting and curriculum enhancing opportunities are highly valued in order to develop the children’s understanding and sense of the world.  The core subjects of maths, English, science and computing are taught discretely.  Foundation subjects are taught in a more interdisciplinary way so that children make learning links across all subjects in a cross-curricular approach.