Curriculum vision statement:
At South Walney Junior School we have a clear and coherent rationale for our curriculum design. Our aim is to provide all our pupils with an inspirational, ambitious and coherently planned knowledge-rich curriculum. It has been designed to be relevant for our learners, developing their key skills and cultural capital, along with expanding their disciplinary and substantive knowledge and, crucially, their vocabulary. We want to achieve a curriculum of challenge and excellence, facilitating children’s acquisition of knowledge, skills and qualities which will help them develop intellectually, emotionally, socially, physically, morally and spiritually so they become independent, responsible, confident and considerate members of society.
We have developed a curriculum that broadens our pupil’s horizons with emphasis on learning that prepares them with key life skills, skills that make them responsible citizens who make a difference in their community. We believe that our curriculum has the ability to be transformative and enables our children, who are predominantly white working class, to see the world beyond and develop life- long learning. ‘Quality of education matters to all children. But it matters especially for disadvantaged children’ Julian Grenier. We believe we are delivering a curriculum that will enable all children to ‘break that cycle of disadvantage’. We know and value our children and demand a curriculum that helps overcome adversity, challenges stereotypes and believes our children can and will achieve. This is reflected in our outcomes in 2020 and 2021.
The curriculum meets the needs of our children at a local level, for instance, developing their STEM skills and design technology skills, or providing them with the digital tools to thrive in modern day society.
Our curriculum is vibrant and exciting with a plethora of opportunities to learn outside of the classroom through trips, visitors and extra-curricular activities. We are aware of the limited experiences of our children beyond Barrow and are passionate in helping our pupils expand their knowledge and understanding of the world.
Throughout our curriculum, our pupils are given the opportunity to develop and practise the basic skills of Maths and English. We have devised a well-thought out and diverse reading curriculum which allows all pupils access to our curriculum and ensure our children are ready for the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities that adult life will bring.
We are a research-rich school and use a wide range of pedagogical approaches to underpin our curriculum, using, for example, Herts for Learning fluency and EEF to improve outcomes in reading at KS2 (see Sats results in reading 2022). We are committed to help children ‘know and understand more, remember more and do more’ using spaced retrieval techniques, regular assessment for learning and quality first teaching.
Our curriculum is the means by which we achieve our objectives of educating our children in the knowledge, skills and understanding that they need in order to lead fulfilling lives. Our school curriculum is underpinned by our core principals of
Safe: A Supportive school helping children Achieve and Flourish on a Foundation of Excellence
