The Purpose of Our Curriculum
As a school we want to achieve excellence in all areas of our provision. We aim to be a school where all pupils strive to flourish personally, emotionally and academically. We aim to be a school where all of our team are highly trained, highly motivated and passionate about all pupils’ progress. We strive for our local community to view us proudly as a place of safety, support and progress for their children. A trusted place where the aspirations for their children are in safe, secure and skilled hands. Our planned school curriculum will help us achieve these aims for our children.
At Coedffranc Primary School, we believe that we are all lifelong learners. We maintain that learning should be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for everyone: with pupil wellbeing at its core. Through our teaching, we equip children with the skills, knowledge and experiences necessary to embrace the world around them; developing lifelong learners who able to thrive on challenge.
The Blooming Marvellous Learning Journey – planning through a Concept
As a school, we offer a curriculum which is broad and balanced, with teaching and learning experiences that are engaging, inspiring and empowering; enabling children to learn new skills, apply them across a range of experiences and deepen their understanding of how they may be used in their lives beyond school. Our curriculum is carefully constructed to meet the requirements of the four purposes with learning opportunities planned to give pupils the opportunities to develop the skills, knowledge and experiences they need through purposeful concepts and real-life contexts which develop pupils who can use their thinking skills to analyse, evaluate and create in different contexts when required.
The ‘what matters’ statements from the Areas of Learning and Experience have been carefully considered and, through our concept-based curriculum plans, learning opportunities have been identified to provide meaningful learning activities which require the pupils to develop and apply their integral, discipline and higher-order thinking skills in their learning to make progress in their understanding towards both these statements and in their skills, knowledge and experiences. All teachers plan for the cross-curricular responsibilities of literacy, numeracy and digital competence to support learning, where appropriate. These are essential for learners to be able to participate successfully and confidently in the modern world.
Here at Coedffranc Primary School, much of our curriculum is delivered through the Coedffranc Blooming Marvellous Learning Journey: a termly project that allows the children to use the skills they have been taught previously in exciting, real life contexts. Across the course of each academic year, teaching staff develop a broad range of tasks that provide a wealth of challenges and experiences, all designed to provoke a deeper level of understanding and create authentic contexts in which our children can apply, explore and manipulate the skills they have acquired.
As well as being designed to encompass the vision of our four purposes, our learning journeys are:
- authentic: rooted in Welsh values and culture and aligned with an agreed set of stated purposes
- evidence-based: drawing on the best of existing practice within Wales and from elsewhere, and on sound evidence-based research and enquiry
- responsive: relevant to the needs of today (individual, local and national), but also equipping all young people with the knowledge, skills and dispositions for future challenges as lifelong learners
- inclusive: easily understood by all, encompassing an entitlement to high-quality education for every child and young person and taking account of their views in the context of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and those of parents, carers and wider society
- ambitious: embodying high expectations and setting no artificial limits on achievement and challenge for each individual child and young person
- empowering: developing competences which will allow young people to engage confidently with the challenges of their future lives
- unified: enabling continuity and flow with components which combine and build progressively
- engaging: encouraging enjoyment from learning and satisfaction in mastering challenging subject matter based on subsidiarity: commanding the confidence of all, while encouraging appropriate ownership and decision making by those closest to the teaching and learning process
- manageable: recognising the implications for and supported by appropriate assessment and accountability arrangements.
- rights-based: underpinned by the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Pupil Progress
Learners make progress within our curriculum by building on what they know and can do, by adding to and changing their knowledge, skills, capacities, dispositions and values, or by applying them in more complex situations. In Coedffranc Primary School, we characterise learning progressions as:
- developing the knowledge and skills specified in a planned curriculum, such as those in mathematics, science, or the arts;
- more broadly, developing the capacity to think about and explain what has been learned or apply this learning in new ways to other parts of the curriculum or to life outside school; and
- even more broadly, developing personal attributes for learning, such as ecological and cultural awareness, commitment, self-regulation, collaboration and independence.
We aim to develop a shared understanding of progression with the following stakeholders through the following actions:
Governors
- Through inviting members of the governing body to listen to learners and take part in learning walks on the theme of the principles of progression
- Through key members of staff sharing the principles of progression within governing body meetings
Parents
- Through taking part in enquiry based professional learning, we will develop and share information on pupil progression with parents to develop their understanding of progression
- Discuss progress made by pupils with progress and share how parents can support pupils to make further progress
Staff
- Through taking part in enquiry based professional learning, we will develop our understanding of the purpose of progress so that it raises the aspirations of every child and young person in our school
- Through INSET and ADDS sessions, come to an agreement on what progression looks like in our school in respect of learning
- Ensuring our designed curriculum delivers on providing aspirations for our pupils and that children are aware of what they are learning and why
- Develop purposeful assessment processes that show that progress is being made and establish if pupils truly understand
Pupils
- Through teaching, ensure that pupils understand what they are learning and why
- Discuss, in an appropriate way, what the principles of progression are and ensure that they deepen their understanding of these principles as they move through the school
Teacher Training Institutions
- The school will engage with universities and other training providers to share our understanding of progress and use their guidance to shape and refine our own understanding.
Assessment and Feedback
The aims and objectives of assessment in our school are:
- To enable our learners to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do in their work
- To help our learners understand what they need to do next and how they might go about achieving it
- To allow teachers to plan work that accurately reflects the needs of each pupil
- To provide the head teacher and governors with information that allows them to make judgements about the effectiveness of the school.
Pupils will be given effective feedback and time to act on the feedback given so that they have a clear idea of what they need to do to improve. This will be achieved through regular and consistent use of success criteria, formative assessment for learning techniques and the use of longer-term targets. A range of assessments will be used by teachers, both summative and formative, to record and evidence the pupils are making and to indicate where they need to go next on their learning journey.
Reviewing our Curriculum
The curriculum will be kept under review by the Governors and school leaders to ensure it meets the aims intended. We will engage with parents and children every two years as part of a planned self-evaluation timetable to review what we need more of, or less of in our curriculum. Any changes will be made in consultation with stakeholders.