2. Curriculum design - Access for all to a broad and balanced curriculum.

The school’s curriculum is ambitious and designed to give pupils, particularly disadvantaged learners including those with SEND, the knowledge, skills, moral compass, and aspirations they need to take advantage of opportunities, responsibilities and experiences in later life. 

A knowledge rich, coherently planned and sequenced curriculum model works in tandem with a bespoke Teaching & Learning, personal development and behaviour model, which is systematic, responsive to need and intelligently interconnected. All pupils receive a broad and balanced curriculum that is appropriate to their age and /or stage of development. 

The curriculum reflects the aims and statutory requirements of the National curriculum, EYFS framework, birth to five matters, Religious Education (following the Northumberland agreed syllabus) PSHE, age-appropriate relationships, sex and health education as well as a purposeful emphasis on personal development and contextualised safeguarding. 

In KS1 there is a deliberate focus on pupils being able to read, write and use mathematical knowledge, ideas, and operations so that they can access the broad and rich curriculum of KS2. 

The curriculum is designed and centrally planned through five agreed principles which inform the rigorous skeletal structure in which all subjects operate: 

• Domains within and across subjects are clearly identified with key concepts and underpinning substantive and disciplinary knowledge meticulously mapped (Big picture).

• Planning is sequential, logical, cumulative (so that it builds upon what has gone before accounting for any gaps due to the pandemic). 

• Target memories and end points in learning are clearly identified in and across subjects (clarity re: the need to know facts, vocabulary, concepts or experiences). 

• Building ensures manageable cognitive load (less is more). 

• Planning retrieves, recaps, revisits and revises previous learning (ensuring children are ready for their next steps because they learn and remember their learning). 

3. Teaching and Learning - Delivered in a way to help children learn more and remember more.

Our best bets for teaching inform the principles and mechanisms which underpin the design and delivery of our school’s curriculum.

Notably: 

• Attending to learning, 

• Working/long term memory, 

• Encoding, 

• Cognitive load theory, 

• Dual-coding, 

• Retrieval practice, 

• Assessment, and the importance of feedback

So that - 

• Learning is designed and delivered to ensure it is securely encoded (presented clearly)

• Learning is revisited to interrupt forgetting (certainties that drive recall and retrieval)

• Teachers use assessment and are skilled in the delivery of appropriate encoding and retrieval strategies to support, strengthen and stretch learning 

• Learning is accessible to all learners

Assessment – There is a strong bridge between teaching and learning, assessment and curriculum. 

4. Citizens of the future - Employability and Ambition - Developing character and unlocking essential skills to prepare for career development and life as citizens who positively contribute to society

5. Secure attachments and feel safe in their environment - Developing the knowledge and skills to attune to our own mental health and connecting with others and our environment in a safe and healthy way

6. Core values - Guided by the learning and strong habituation of moral attributes