Outline of the National Curriculum at St Andrew's
St. Andrew's Curriculum Statement
Curriculum Intent
At St. Andrew's we have used the national curriculum as a framework to design a bespoke, ambitious, broad and balanced curriculum that aims to challenge, excite and inspire our children, engaging their imagination in order to create reflective, resilient, enquiring lifelong learners.
We balance the requirement for pupils to reach national expectations in core subjects whilst also providing a wide range of thoughtful, enriching experiences and opportunities in other foundation subjects including the progression of milestones from the ‘Chris Quigley Essentials Curriculum’ and our '50 things'.
Our curriculum is carefully sequenced so that children develop long-term memorable knowledge and skills. Links are created throughout the curriculum to give the children the opportunity to revisit key concepts and topics not only in other subjects but also in subsequent years. This frequent revisiting increases their chance of transferring new information into long term memory.
We utilise our local area helping us to enrich children’s learning experiences. We have excellent relationships with our local church, primary schools and high schools, all of which contribute to our unique curriculum throughout the year. We know that learning outside of the classroom excites and inspires our children so we work hard to ensure that children experience school trips or visiting speakers several times throughout the year.
Christian values are at the heart of our teaching and learning and we encourage all of our children to put these values into practice in every aspect of school life. We work particularly hard with the children to develop an ‘I can’ attitude towards their learning and a strong resilience to challenge, by understanding the importance of the ‘Power of Yet’ and the value of making mistakes.
Curriculum Implementation
Our personalised curriculum is based upon the statutory curriculum for Reception and Years 1 – 6. It builds in opportunities for repetition and to return to areas which allows our children to gain a deeper understanding of the skills and processes within subjects. Progression of knowledge, skills and understanding is planned carefully both within each year group and across year groups in a way that maximises learning opportunities.
Ensuring teachers have sound subject knowledge is a priority and CPD opportunities are made available to staff to ensure that all staff training needs are identified and that teachers attend high quality training.
All policies relating to the curriculum and teaching and learning support the ethos of the school and ensure that all learning is effective and well planned. We follow the letters and sound scheme for our Phonics and our reading is an amalgamation of a variety of schemes including Oxford Reading Tree, Big Cat, Bug Club, Songbirds and Phonics Bug.
Curriculum Impact
Evidence of the impact of St Andrew's curriculum is closely monitored by senior and middle leaders through work scrutiny, learning walks, teacher dialogue, AfL opportunities, summative assessment and pupil/parent voice.
The outcomes of National assessments demonstrate that when children leave St. Andrew's school, they are very well prepared for the next stage in their education.
Please click on the subject website pages to learn more about each of our curriculum areas. Knowledge Organisers are also sent home for each new topic in History, Geography and Science.