St Mary's RCVA Primary School

Intent

At St Mary’s RCVA Primary School, we want everyone in our school community to aim to be the best that they can be, letting their lights shine for all to see. In a caring and nurturing environment, where the whole family is welcomed, we strive to develop every child academically and pastorally in an environment of collaboration and care where Christ is at the centre of everything that we do. Through an ethos of mutual respect, love and cooperation, everything is underpinned by our mission statement – ‘Growing together in the friendship of faith’. We want our children to develop a love of learning, become resilient individuals and be prepared for their next stage of education. We are driven to open up the world of knowledge to our children , through an exciting and enriching curriculum, to inform and equip them with the skills to live positive, productive and fulfilling lives.

Show our children what they can achieve if they explore, discover and dream

Teach in a supportive, guiding and inspirational way

Motivate and challenge our children to achieve academic success

Appreciate the uniqueness of every child

Realise the potential in every child through opportunities that expand horizons

Y oung minds will be nurtured and everyone will be included

Successful, caring, confident, curious and resilient children will grow and flourish

Implementation

We aim to provide a curriculum which challenges, excites and ignites curiosity in our children which will enable them to become successful, lifelong learners. We recognise that every child is unique; we aim to tailor the curriculum and our provision to meet their needs. Communication and socialisation is at the heart of the curriculum, with our aim being to develop children who work cooperatively and collaboratively. As a P4C school we value the importance of philosophical thinking: The 4C’s creative, collaborative, critical, caring communities are integral to the intent of our curriculum.

Our enriched curriculum, which broadly follows the National Curriculum, has been uniquely designed by the whole school community, to meet the specific needs of all our children and give them the life opportunities, ambition, and aspirations to enable them to become fulfilled, successful and responsible citizens.

Our approach is to expose children to rich real-life experiences, inside and outside the classroom, which develops a deep contextual understanding and love of learning and commits knowledge to long term memory.  High levels of collaboration are evident throughout the school: with our children, within and across staff teams, with parents, governors and the wider community.

Impact

We will measure the impact of our work through a variety of methods, including:

• Whole school monitoring which will include school self evaluation, planning scrutiny, monitoring of books, classroom visits, pupil discussions, data analysis and pupil progress meetings
• Subject leader roles - action plans, subject progressions, scrutiny of books, lesson visits, discussions with children, themed days
• Governor monitoring visits
• Children's books –  will demonstrate their increasingly secure knowledge of curriculum content and a development of the key skills, associated with these and other subjects
• Class books / Class pages on our school website – will show the range of opportunities pupils have been afforded and other learning which is not easily shown in exercise books (collaborative work, visits, visitors, themed days, practical activities etc.)
• Classroom displays - will show learning experiences, provision and subject focuses 
• Discussions with children –will give them the opportunity to describe what they have learnt, can do and where they think they need to develop further
• Observations of children in class and around school –  will enable a judgement to be made about the development of knowledge and skills, including a range of personal and social skills (attitudes and behaviours)
• Internal tracking data and national results –will allow us to measure the success of key knowledge and skills against national levels and ascertain progress
• Comments / Thank you messages from visitors in school and visits out of school
• External validation of judgements through school improvement partnerships