Our curriculum is based on 3 simple yet powerful ideas.
1. Our curriculum exceeds the ambition of the National Curriculum by meeting the specific needs of our community to help children to grow.
2. The purpose of the Spaxton curriculum is for children to develop a deep body of knowledge and build 'cultural capital' so they do well in the education system and in life.
3. It is always in draft form and evolving.
What is our curriculum intent?
Our school vision is built on the teachings of St Paul around love and compassionate care. We believe that through this culture and ethos, all can flourish and achieve. We also believe that children can develop their character in our Christian setting through the driver of 'knowing more and remembering more'. In essence, our curriculum reflects the vision and ambition for our school.
Leaders in our school have set out powerful knowledge to be gained by the time children leave our school by setting out the following:
- Statements of intent in the document below, setting out what children must know, understand and do
- Indicating which knowledge exceeds the ambition of the National Curriculum, reflecting our spiritual mission to grow children and meet the needs of our community. This is set out in green text within the document below.
How is the curriculum implemented?
We deliver a rigorous knowledge-based curriculum with subject teaching. Where we make cross-curricular links, we do so. We mainly teach in a small-steps way based on the QET principles of Teaching and Learning Excellence, themselves coming from Barak Rosenshine's work on effective teaching.
Here we set out the sequence of knowledge to be delivered per subject across phases in the school.
English Small Steps
Maths Small Steps
Science Small Steps
RE and PSHE Small Steps
Computing Small Steps
Foundation Subjects Small Steps
How do we measure impact?
Quite simply, we measure how much children know and remember against the transition points set out in each subject's intent. We do this regularly and at points in the journey by evaluating what children produce in 4 ways: