Intent of Our Curriculum

The vision for our school community is to nurture compassion, courage, trust and a lifelong love of learning, founded on Christian values, as we grow and flourish together.

At St Andrew’s we know that every member of our community is special and unique.

We believe in everybody, relationships and growing together in all that we do to ensure respect, focus and pride. Our vision is for a school where a love for learning and an appreciation of the world will last our children a lifetime.

Our goal is to ensure that the unique needs of all our children are met and to provide every child with courage to pursue their passions and interests with pride. Our commitment is to develop and sustain great educational provision that serve our children, families and the community, leaving a legacy for everybody.

Implementation of Our Curriculum

We see our curriculum as everything we say and do, so it is far more than the subjects we teach or the projects we design. It enables us to support our children to grow and for them in turn to help others to do so.

We believe that people in the wider world are valued by their mastery of knowledge and skills, the quality of their work and by their character. This is often what we all look for in the people we trust, who we employ, and the friends we choose. At St Andrew’s Primary School, we want our children to gain mastery of the knowledge and skills in our curriculum, produce high quality work with an ethic of excellence and develop their own unique character. We believe that to achieve this requires effort over time and craftsmanship.

‘We are all crew, not passengers.’ Children have ownership and responsibility at St Andrew’s for the implementation of their learning they act as leaders with their peers. We encourage children to stand up for equity within their crew, across school and in their community. Children become active leaders in their own learning. They are encouraged to set their own targets within daily learning and final outcomes. At St Andrew’s, this means sharing leadership roles with teachers, administration team, support staff and children. We have a commitment to everybody, working to make the school and the world a better place.

At St Andrew’s Primary School, our curriculum is challenging and reactive to changes in the world, promoting a thirst for learning and resilience. It is created from the national curriculum for England, which sets out the content and programmes of study for maintained primary schools. We view the national curriculum as a minimum entitlement for children in our school to access all subjects, therefore providing them with a broad and balanced education that acknowledges the significance of British values in a modern world.

As they move through the school, the progression of each subject is planned so that children can build upon prior knowledge, whilst developing an overarching sense of the themes and skills within each area. We aim to provide rich learning opportunities that will take children beyond their everyday experiences. In turn, children will develop a focussed work ethic and interpersonal skills as well as becoming independent, creative and critical thinkers. We believe every child deserves a curriculum that is relevant and accessible to include all learners.

Our school curriculum is high quality and academically thorough, organised into thematic projects. This enables children and teachers to make links across and within subjects, supporting vocabulary development and knowledge use through big ideas.

We infuse our school curriculum with first-hand experiences and opportunities that engage children with our local community and in service to others. Each project will also have a presentation of learning which requires the children to plan for example, an exhibition, event, resource or publication. This expects the learners to synthesise and share their learning with others. In this way, we are able to develop both academic learning full of knowledge as well as character traits such as collaboration, communication, planning skills, courage and entrepreneurship.

Our curriculum projects have four golden threads woven within them: courage, diversity, legacy and struggle. These overlap with and support our Christain values of compassion, courage and trust. The four golden threads or concepts, encompass the human spirit across the world and from the beginning of time. They help to drive understanding for children who encounter them in all our projects as they study cause and effect, noticing change and progress.

 Our curriculum is structured so that each year group has:

• A clear plan of what must be taught for each project
• A knowledge organiser containing national curriculum objectives, concepts, subject specific knowledge and vocabulary 
• Subject-specific progression documents that detail how knowledge, skills and concepts are linked and demonstrate how depth within the curriculum is developed through the child's journey EYFS – Y6 school
• A list of influential people and significant world events that the children should know
• A structure of how the four golden threads are woven through the projects
• Opportunities for enrichment within the local community and beyond

Impact of Our Curriculum

We measure the impact of our curriculum continually and in many different ways. We see success in our pupils all the time, but know that the greatest learning happens when we struggle. Children are encouraged to take risks, make mistakes and learn from them. Praise is given when they struggle and time is given for grappling with tasks before giving feedback. Children then have opportunities to respond to advice, and to persevere with greater resilience and a positive attitude to more challenging learning.

We define progress as the widening and deepening of essential knowledge that leads to the further development of understanding and skills. Teachers notice and celebrate every small step of progress, with prior knowledge of the child and their specific needs. Pupils and teachers regularly review and act on feedback. Children present evidence of their achievement and progress, to a range of audiences to demonstrate pride in being the best they can be.

Impact is measured through:

Teacher assessment both formative to inform planning and summative to inform progress

• formative – through ongoing questioning, learning conversations, verbal feedback, informal quizzes, practical tasks, day to day work and reasoning. This informs teachers' planning, helping to identify the next steps in the learning process which are shared with the children.
• summative – end of project, unit, term or Key Stage assessments.  The results show each child's standard of achievement against national age-related expectations.

Pupil voice that encourages children to invest in their learning

• pupil questionnaires, self and peer assessment, council crew, learning dialogue in the classroom; the views of the values, learning and sports partners and the voice of the treetops

Parental feedback allowing us to work in partnership

• parent questionnaires, presentations of learning, parent’s evenings, informal meetings before and after school, PTA. Parents are invited in to school to formally discuss the progress of their children on two occasions and an end of year written report is also produced. Other discussions with parents are always welcomed.

Data analysis to support teacher judgements

• internal with senior leaders, subject leadership, pupil progress meetings, governor meetings, external data (end of Key Stage assessments)

Quality assurance to ensure accuracy and consistency

• coaching sessions, peer observations, drop-ins, learning walks, book scrutiny, pupil interviews, formal observations

Positive attitudes to learning observed in the children and through Thrive assessments

• children engaged and inspired by their learning, posing own enquiry questions, taking initiative, co-constructing the learning pathway, child engaged assessment, pupil interviews. Children can identify their own next steps and refer to learning intentions and success criteria to do this.

Respect shown for the environment and one another

• visibly demonstrated through their school environment, their work, interactions and manner towards others and moral responsibility.