“The Spirit of Jesus Christ in our heads, hearts, words and actions, where we learn and grow together.”
Our Curriculum Vision: to have uncompromising aspirations for all children, regardless of their starting points, and to provide a broad, balanced and challenging education so children know more, remember more and make connections in their learning.
Our Aims: At St Mary’s Catholic Primary Academy, our Catholic Pupil Profile is at the core of our curriculum. We ensure that all of our pupils respect each other and for people of all faiths, race and gender. Everyone has the right to be treated with respect and dignity. There is a focus on developing children’s moral, spiritual, social, vocational and cultural understanding and we ensure that children are well prepared for life in modern Britain
Our curriculum is designed to meet the needs of all children and families within our community. Through careful planning, our curriculum is designed to provide all children with opportunities, skills and experiences which they need to be successful in their education and life beyond St Mary’s.
Being part of St Francis and St Clare Multi Academy Company – a large family of primary and secondary schools – we do not see each child’s time at St Mary’s as an isolated experience, but rather as part of a longer journey of building on their knowledge and skills which will prepare them to take up their place in the world as tolerant, open-minded, productive citizens serving the common good.
Our curriculum offer for our children has been carefully designed to ensure all National Curriculum requirements are met, but it also provides all of our learners with memorable experiences and diverse, rich and exciting opportunities from which they can learn and develop a range of transferable knowledge and skills for the next stage in their lives.
A primary focus of our curriculum is to identify children’s interests but to also identify their barriers to learning in the community we serve. We aim to provide an opportunity to develop interests and overcome barriers through our ‘Curriculum Drivers’. These ‘drivers’ are used to underpin the direction and development of all areas of school life and to ensure our curriculum is enriched and personalised in order to meet the needs, interests and ambitions of our children and families.
Our Curriculum Drivers:
- Aspiration
- Healthy lifestyles
- Communication
- Community
- Knowledge of the World
We believe in a flexible curriculum which is driven by our pupils’ interests and one which can be responsive to world or local events/needs. We review the curriculum regularly, including the ‘Curriculum Drivers’, and engage all staff in the process of continually improving the offer for our children.
Our Curriculum Concepts
Our curriculum is also centred around whole-school key concepts which have been identified by our middle leaders. These concepts run as key threads throughout the science and foundation curriculum to support children with developing a more complex understanding of them and to help to transfer knowledge from their working memory to their long-term memory.
For further details on our curriculum concepts, please view the page here.
At St Mary’s Catholic Primary Academy, we want our children to experience:
- A school curriculum that has the Catholic Pupil Profile at the heart of everything they do.
- A school curriculum which promotes the learning and development of our youngest children in EYFS to ensure they are ready for their journey into Key Stage One and beyond.
- A school curriculum which ensures equal access to learning for all pupils, with high expectations for every child and appropriate challenge and support.
- A school curriculum that has knowledge and vocabulary at the heart of their learning.
- A rich and diverse curriculum that enables children to see the world from a range of perspectives.
- A curriculum where knowledge underpins and enables the application of skills and concepts in different contexts.
- A curriculum that provides opportunities to embed basic skills and express knowledge in a variety of ways before moving on.
- A curriculum that develops individual resilience, perseverance, challenge and support so that pupils have the confidence to aim high, aspire to more and reach their true potential at St Mary’s and beyond.
- A curriculum that provides opportunities to delve deeper into their leaning, building on skills and knowledge progressively each year.
- A curriculum that provides opportunities for children to experience enrichment opportunities which they wouldn’t have readily available at home.
- A curriculum that responds to findings from pupil feedback and school data to ensure it is bespoke to their needs and reflects the ever changing world, locally and globally.
- A curriculum that helps children and families to know how to live healthy lifestyles – both physically and mentally.
- A curriculum that embeds spiritual, moral, social, vocational and cultural experiences threaded through it – facilitating what pupils will and must face in life.
- A curriculum that has the fundamental foundations of love and safeguarding at its core giving the children personal well-being, safety and a knowing that they are loved in a nurturing school environment.
Please view our Curriculum Policy on our Policies page by clicking here.
