Ward Jackson Primary School

Intent

As we are a small, family school we have designed our curriculum - based on the National Cur-riculum - to meet the needs and interest levels of our children and wider school community. We offer a cumulative, knowledge-rich, skills-based curriculum to enable our learners to thrive and become the best that they can be. With levels of 70% + pupil premium, we tailor our curriculum to explicitly expose children to ‘experiences’ which will deepen learning, develop schema and enhance Cultural Capital by enabling them to deploy the appropriate knowledge and skills in any given situation. We are educating children for life in all its fullness. Our curriculum is therefore thematic and holistic in order to nurture ‘the whole child’. High quality literature is placed centrally within our thematic curriculum: "When I read... I can step into someone else's shoes... I can go anywhere I want... I can be whoever I want to be." (Laila – Y3). A love of reading is embedded within our curriculum; we recognise that reading is essential for emotional health and well-being in addition to academic success across the whole curriculum.
Reading is the one ability that, once set in motion, has the capacity to feed itself, to grow exponentially, providing a base from which the possibilities are infinite. (Michael Morpurgo) Our curriculum offer nurtures and empowers pupils to become the best that they can be. Meta-cognition is taught in conjunction with ‘traditional’ subject content which will be necessary in secondary education, higher education and future employment. The pace of change is increasing: the world of 2030 will be very different to the world of today. As a school, we are therefore continually reflective in our ever-evolving curriculum offers. We invest a significant amount of time in monitoring, review and evaluation of teaching, learning and curriculum.