Bournehall Primary School

AN INTRODUCTION TO OUR CURRICULUM

We are committed to the provision of high quality education, within a secure, happy and stimulating environment where every member of our school community is valued and encouraged to learn and develop the knowledge and skills for lifelong learning.

Our school ethos is firmly rooted in our core and linked values. The British Values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith are embedded in these. Our school curriculum is underpinned by our values and shaped by our curriculum drivers: creativity, equity, aspiration and community.

The curriculum comprises of all the planned activities that we organise in order to promote learning, to prepare children for life in both modern Britain and the global community and to encourage personal growth and development.

Our broad and balanced curriculum is designed to meet the needs of all of our pupils, building on their knowledge, skills and understanding, whatever their starting point with oracy being at the heart of all we do.   We want our children to be successful, independent and reflective life-long learners who value themselves, others and the environment they share, as global citizens. 

We work towards our aims through providing high quality learning experiences within all we do in the national and wider curriculum, in the school environment and the interactions between all members of the school community. We work to ‘inspire a love of learning’ and to equip our children with the skills, knowledge and understanding necessary for them to make informed choices for their futures. We are committed to providing enjoyable, engaging and stimulating learning experiences which will enable all pupils to be successful, regardless of their age, gender, disability, ethnicity or social group.

The Essentials Curriculum 

Our curriculum is underpinned by the Essentials Curriculum by Chris Quigley. This forms the  framework for National Curriculum subjects.  The Essentials Curriculum sets out the essential coverage, learning objectives and standards which are required for all subjects as stated in the National Curriculum. The aims of this curriculum ‘are to ensure that our pupils experience a wide breadth of study and have, by the end of each key stage, long-term memory of an ambitious body of procedural and semantic knowledge.’  (Chris Quigley) 

One of the primary reasons we chose this curriculum is because it emphasises the importance of developing the depth of children’s learning. In essence, this means providing children with increased cognitive challenge, allowing them to apply the skills which they have learnt independently in a range of contexts rather than moving them onto the next skill needlessly when they have not truly mastered it.

We feel this curriculum provides us with a coherent, progressive and appropriately sequenced curricular structure to enable our pupils to develop subject specific knowledge and skills to prepare them well for the next stages of their education. The curriculum, builds progressively on from the learning in the Foundation Stage. The curriculum is aligned to the National Curriculum and goes beyond National Curriculum requirements in each milestone to ensure repetition of skills and knowledge.

Here at Bournehall, we believe that:

• there is ‘No Limit to Learning’
• we are all learners – learning is a lifelong experience
• we are all teachers - we teach the children through all that we do
• learning and teaching should not just be seen as an isolated activity that happens in a classroom
• we place high emphasis on oracy as it is key to successful learning