Our Currriculum Intent

We are inspired by St. Brendan who journeyed beyond the familiar and into the unknown. We aim to provide an education that is rich in experiences that will capture a hunger in the children to broaden their horizons and revel in the beauty of God’s creation along their learning journey with us. We aim to ensure that all children including the disadvantaged, SEND and those working at depth are celebrated for their individuality and everyone is encouraged to find their own strengths to work diligently to achieve their goals.

Our learners are given a purposeful, progressive, richly designed curriculum based on the National Curriculum which we have carefully interpreted to match our local context. We endeavour to ensure that children in the Eccleshill area are at the heart of our curriculum.

We know our pupils well and following consultation with our school community, we designed our curriculum around the four key drivers:

· Aspiration,

· Diversity,

· Independence

· Responsibility

We aim that all of our children will live happy, healthy and fulfilled lives to be the best that they can be.

Our Implementation

Our mission statement sums up the expectations fostered at our school. We have a belief in teaching for depth and mastery so that in almost all cases and circumstances, a child can be supported to reach age related expectations in reading, writing and maths.

We use our Curriculum to ensure every teacher teaches the knowledge and understanding appropriate to our area. The framework has been broken down into objectives to ensure there is clarity for the teaching staff on coverage and progression. We value a substantive and disciplinary skills and knowledge based curriculum where we aim to develop children’s thinking, reasoning and deeper understanding.

Teachers are provided with one day per half term to plan their curriculum for the following half term. As part of this planning process, teachers plan for the following:

· Learning maps for all subjects to ensure consistency across all areas of the curriculum;

· A cycle of lessons for each subject, which carefully plans for progression and depth;

· Double Page Spreads at the end of each topic to show how learning is embedded throughout a topic

· Trips and visiting experts who will enhance the learning experience;

We believe in ‘Quality First’ teaching for all children and have a clear set of phases to identify SEND children and a rigorous clear interventions policy which ensures we address any identified gap in learning at the earliest opportunity through robust assessment.

Subject Leaders receive up to date training to have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities in curriculum design and delivery. They have the knowledge, expertise and practical skills to carry out this role to the best of their ability, closely supported by the Senior Leadership Team. Subject Leaders lead staff meetings to share their expertise in order to develop the confidence of all teachers.

Subject Leaders have developed and mapped their subjects to ensure that skills are built upon year on year and children have opportunities to develop their cognitive memory by revisiting knowledge at different points in the year. We have developed our own Learn, Recall, Remember sheets (Sticky Knowledge) to help pupils to embed factual learning.

Assessment is used daily in the form of Assessment for Learning. This informs the planning for future lessons and identifies where further individual or group support is needed. Target Tracker is used to track pupil progress and attainment in Reading, Writing and Maths. Foundation Subjects are assessed using low risk quizzes and by following ‘The Feedback Policy’.

Our Curriculum Impact

We evaluate the effectiveness of our curriculum through pupil outcomes. We measure this through regular assessments and feedback at the point of learning, standard of output and pupil enjoyment through pupil voice.  We carry out regular formative and summative assessments and monitor the learning in pupils’ books to gain a deep understanding of the depth of knowledge and skills all our pupils possess. We believe that all children have the right to be successful and as such we provide pupils with opportunities to access keep up programmes and interventions to ensure that they make outstanding progress from their starting points. Our pupils leave our school ready to take an active part in society, prepared for the next stage of their learning, inspired and motivated to achieve their true potential.