Alexandra Primary School
Curriculum Statement
The curriculum is all the planned activities that we organise in order to promote successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve. At Alexandra Primary School, we encourage all children to: Aspire to be successful learners who enjoy learning; Perform as well as they can, make progress and achieve and become confident individuals who are able to live safe and fulfilling lives; Succeed as responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society.
Our aim is to deliver a curriculum which is enjoyed by all; staff and children alike and that it is a curriculum fit for the 21st century. There is also a high focus on developing children’s moral, spiritual, social and cultural understanding. The school’s focus on curriculum development has been carefully designed to ensure coverage and progression. The children's own community is frequently used as a starting point for engaging interest. For example, we have close links with Griffin Park Learning Zone (GPLZ) where children participate in clubs to promote our core skills and values. GPLZ also visit our school and provide workshops and opportunities within the children’s own environment. We aim to provide pupils with memorable experiences, in addition to diverse and rich opportunities from which children can learn and develop a range of transferable skills. We recognise that the children need both a sense of valuing themselves, and developing aspirations for their future and for their community. From year 3 onwards, children learn Spanish which provides opportunity for children to gain an understanding of learning an additional language.
At Alexandra Primary School we believe that our curriculum should be rich, exciting, engaging and inspiring, and meet the needs of all children whatever their ability. Our school curriculum includes the requirements of the National Curriculum and the knowledge, skills and activities that meet the need of the school community. There is also a range of extra-curricular activities that the school organises in order to enrich the experiences of the children. Through our curriculum, our intention is to provide opportunities for the children to develop both knowledge and skills, promoting critical thinking and equip them with the ability to apply a deeper understanding to new concepts and link together concepts previously taught. We follow a child-led curriculum based on the interests of the children so that it is both enjoyable and purposeful.
Alexandra Primary School has identified values to support our aims. Our values have evolved through discussion with children, staff, parents and Governors. Of these values, two stand out as being key to develop with the school community.
We set British Values in the context of these two key values. We aim to teach our children to be prepared for their future, have the skills to succeed, know how to think and learn in order to overcome whatever challenges they might meet and to make the most of every opportunity.
2. School Values and Aims
Our curriculum is underpinned by our school values and moral purpose. These are:
Aspire: Independence, Achievement, Ambition and Creativity;
Perform: Respect, Honesty, Confidence and Reflection;
Succeed: Resilience, Collaboration, Responsibility and Reliability
We aim to be a school where:
3. Curriculum intention
Our intention is to ensure that every child receives a rich, exciting, engaging and inspiring education. This is based on more than the objectives from the National Curriculum programmes of study and includes elements from the UNICEF Right Respecting Programme, our own Learning to Respect curriculum along with specific school focused speaking and listening objectives and has been mapped out in our curriculum plans.
4. Curriculum implementation
The implementation of our curriculum is based on cross curricular links where appropriate, wow days to introduce a topic or concept, a range of texts to link English with our foundation subjects and links made across the curriculum and the wider curriculum such as RRSA and Wellbeing. Our values are linked to each year group’s curriculum and we acknowledge what we do to consolidate children’s understanding of each value in school. Linked to this is a whole school strategy ‘Whole, Happy, Healthy’ to promote emotional literacy and wellbeing of children and staff by considering work load pressures alongside all activities and initiatives.
Staff plan in a collaborative way to ensure pace, challenge and consistency. Staff also share their varied expertise to support their colleagues in developing the quality of education for the children. This is achieved through peer learning, team teaching and Staff Continued Professional Learning (CPL) opportunities.
We deliver our curriculum by supporting, guiding and inspiring our children through excellent teaching practices. By working with our families we will create an aspirational school community in which everyone
is valued and successes are celebrated. High quality visits and visitors enhance the curriculum and provide opportunities for writing for a purpose. We encourage the children to take part in fun activity days such as World Book Day, plus many other specially themed days where the children can dress up, create projects and models and experience a totally different school day and further enhance their Topic in their year group.
We expect all children to have high aspirations in order to perform and succeed. Our Alexandra Pedagogy cards ensure that all staff have high expectations and work consistently across the whole school.
5. Curriculum objectives
The objectives of our school curriculum are:
6. Organisation and Planning
In order to provide continuity and progression, the curriculum is planned in three parts.
- We agree a long term plan for each year group, building on the learning and experiences children bring year on year and from Early Years and KS1 into KS2, setting out which areas are to be taught across each year group over the school year.
- Our medium term plans show specific objectives to be taught within each area of the curriculum over the period of a term.
- Our short term plans are those that our teachers write on a weekly or daily basis. These are used to set out the learning objectives for each lesson, based on prior knowledge and understanding and focused on the next steps of learning for each child.
We endeavour to make curriculum links in order to maximise the opportunities for developing reading, writing, speaking and listening and maths skills across other subjects. Our PSHE lessons provide children with opportunities to discuss and learn about personal health, wellbeing, safety, relationships (including anti-bullying work), differences and aspirations. Philosophy for Children is currently being developed into our school curriculum and offers our children the chance to raise questions, discuss important issues,
learn to listen to others views and share their own thoughts. Children are given the opportunity to discuss the Rights of the Child articles and share their views because we are a Rights Respecting School having achieved the Bronze accreditation in December 2018.
Over the course of an academic year, children have the opportunity to experience the full range of subjects, although there may be a focus on one term on history, then geography the following term.
Extra-Curricular Activities
We endeavour to extend the curriculum by offering a range of before and after school activities, mainly delivered by specialist coaches or teachers. To promote physical health and wellbeing, a range of extra-curricular clubs gives learners an opportunity to access a variety of sports clubs after school hours such as Dance, Gymnastics and a variety of Sports clubs such as Tennis.
7. Inclusion
The curriculum is designed to be inclusive and ensures that the needs of individual and small groups of children can be met within the environment of high quality first wave teaching, supported by targeted, proven interventions where appropriate. In this way it can be seen to impact in a very positive way on pupil outcomes. The curriculum is designed to be accessed by all children. If we think it necessary to modify some children’s access to the curriculum, in order to best meet their needs, then we do this in consultation with our SENCO and parents.
If children have specific special needs, we endeavour to meet these as set out in SEN Policy and / or disability action plan.
We aim to challenge children who are More Able by differentiating learning effectively and through challenging their thinking and through enrichment activities.
8. Roles and Responsibilities
The Headteacher and SLT are responsible for overseeing the day to day organisation of the curriculum through:
Parents are made aware of the curriculum through start of year Welcome meetings and through fortnightly sections in newsletters outlining the learning in each year group. Every term, parents receive an updated review of the objectives for the year group across all subjects so that they can support their children’s learning at home.
Subject Leaders monitor and review the way the subjects they are responsible for are taught throughout the school. Each subject leader reviews the curriculum plans for their subject, ensuring there is full coverage of the National Curriculum and that progression is planned into schemes of work. Subject leaders and Year Group leaders have been involved in the review of the curriculum to ensure the progression of skills and knowledge is implemented across the school. They each collate evidence via a subject standards report and engage in monitoring activities such as book looks, questionnaires to staff and they hold pupil
interviews in order to check on knowledge and skill acquisition. Subjects are planned to ensure progression of knowledge and skills across school. It is the role of each subject leader to keep up to date with developments in their subject at both national and local level, thereby providing a strategic lead and direction for the subject alongside supporting and advising colleagues.
Class teachers are responsible for the day to day planning and delivery of the curriculum within their year groups, and assessing children’s learning to monitor how successfully their aims have been achieved. Through Planning, Preparation and Assessment time, staff meet and discuss the outcomes of the lessons through monitoring the past weeks’ learning and prepare for the week ahead.
We belong to a number of partnerships and a soft federation (Collabor8) which supports curriculum planning, delivery and provides opportunities for the monitoring and moderation of standards.
9. Curriculum impact
We are continually reviewing and developing the curriculum as a staff with the intention of improving children’s learning.
The Teaching and Learning Committee of the Governing body is responsible for monitoring the way the school curriculum is implemented. This includes reviews of specific subject policies in line with the school’s monitoring and evaluation schedule.
The impact we are aiming for is to raise standards across the school (applying their English and Maths skills to foundation subjects in the wider curriculum) and our aim includes an increase in enjoyment for what the children are learning and relevance for the children to help them in the future. We encourage them to make connections between what they are learning to have full impact.
The impact of our curriculum will not only be measured by assessment procedures which allow us to measure outcomes against all schools nationally but also achieved through monitoring activities such as: pupil voice, subject standards reports, monitoring and evaluation activities such as book looks and pupil conferencing. Meetings with School Council and the RRSA steering group to allow pupil voice and to feedback ideas about the curriculum and whether our intention has been met. Our curriculum is measured by how effectively it helps our pupils develop into well rounded individuals who embody our values and carry with them the knowledge, skills and attitudes which will make them lifelong learners and valuable future citizens.
Statement endorsed by Governors – June 2019
