Reading Lead: Mrs. Dunn (Acting Deputy Headteacher)

'Imagination is more important than knowledge'.

Albert Einstein

The challenge we face in 2024...

• Developing children's capacity to imagine, invent and experiment with confidence
• Enabling children to engage positively with the growing complexity and diversity of social values and ways of life
• Igniting a passion for learning and life when faced with significant social barriers

Our solution

• Build a curriculum that has Creative and Cultural Education at its heart
• A curriculum that is skills based and knowledge rich but covers less because we want children to explore important themes and concepts in greater depth
• A curriculum that allows time to produce beautiful outcomes and gives space for children discover, explore and create
• A curriculum that inspires independence, action, leadership. team players and thinkers.
• A curriculum that ensures children understand what it means to be human and how that can influence how we treat others and the impact we can have on the world

(inspired by and based upon the work of Jonathan Lear)

'The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect alone but by the play instinct.

The creative mind plays with object it loves'.

C G Jung

We want our children to be brilliant learners with a passion for education and the skills to enable success in life beyond the classroom, therefore every aspect of our curriculum and everything we choose to teach will be informed by our vision and tested against the need to develop the following:

Each term, further skills (related to our choice to focus on fewer things in greater depth) will be prioritised: 

'It is nonsense to say that there are only 10 subjects. By saying this we immediately

exclude 90% of the higher education experience'.

Sir Tim Brighhouse

But what about the other subjects?...*

• Each has a subject specific skills progression
• Each can be called upon to enhance the main focus of the project and will be considered when medium term planning using curriculum concepts which:
• Allow us to filter curriculum content to drive deeper personal learning and thinking skills 
• Give meaning to subjects - get to the big idea that makes us human
• Avoid tenuous 'cross-curricular' links, instead make genuine connections across and beyond traditional subjects.
• Allows for choice in the route a class will follow through a project

*Some aspects will be taught stand-alone and some will not appear. These are carefully considered, deliberate choices - we will always include the things that contribute to our solution and increase the skills we are trying to develop - they are too important to miss.

Curriculum Areas

If you have any questions about your child's curriculum and you wish to talk to their class teacher please go to the school office and they will arrange this for you.