Curriculum Aims and Statement
Our Curriculum Rationale
At Stapleford Community Primary School we are: skilled readers, confident writers, and inspired mathematicians. We are scientists, historians, geographers, musicians, artists, linguists, theologists, athletes, digital scientists, designers and technologists. We are inclusive and diverse. We want our children to have no limits to their ambitions and to become happy and enthusiastic life-long learners! Our curriculum is carefully crafted so that our children develop their academic, social and cultural capital.
Our holistic curriculum is stimulating, designed to promote curiosity, discovery and a love and thirst for learning. It is ambitious and full of opportunity so as to allow everyone to shine, and empowers our children to become independent and resilient. We strive for academic excellence and want our children to have high aspirations, and equally importantly we want children to become thoughtful, open minded and compassionate human beings, confident and able to make their mark on the world that lays before them.
We are committed to nurturing positive attitudes and celebrate values such as tolerance, kindness and perseverance. Our focus on pastoral care and mental well-being, through growth mindset and mindfulness, allows all children to deal confidently with next steps and also to be more resilient learners.
We encourage our children to both challenge and celebrate success in themselves and in others. We want to equip them with not only the minimum statutory requirements of the National Curriculum but to prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. We view our curriculum as a curriculum for life.
With our school being situated 4 miles from the historic city and world renowned seat of learning, Cambridge, we want our children to use the vibrancy of our great city to learn from other cultures, respect diversity, co-operate with one another and appreciate what they have. We achieve this by providing a strong social, moral, spiritual and cultural curriculum, with British Values at the heart of everything we do.
We work to enrich their time in our school with memorable experiences well matched to their needs and interests and to provide opportunities which for many are out of reach. We firmly believe that education does not just happen in the classroom, it is about the added value we offer to really inspire our children. Enrichment is a vital part of our curriculum. This includes school trips, residential trips for our oldest pupils, visitors, special whole school days, extra-curricular clubs, sports competitions and events, music opportunities, outdoor learning such as ‘Moat Mondays’ and ‘Wellie Wednesdays’, taking part in academic competitions such as maths and English challenges, plays and performances.
We have had a recent focus on improving the ‘Arts’, and have the Silver Arts Mark, an Arts Award, the Cambridge ‘MusicMark’ and have once again earned the ‘Gold’ status in the School Sports Award.
As a community school, we are fortunate to have many supportive parents and members of the community who also offer to assist our school through supporting learning, providing resources, events, helping on trips, running or helping with clubs, contributing to the organizing and delivery of events such as in science days. We regularly seek the views of all members of the school community, with regular pupil voice and annual parent / staff surveys.
Our curriculum development has included working with local schools in a Cluster and the Trust Schools Curriculum Development Group. We liaise with our main feeder school, Sawston Village College to ensure continuity to best prepare our children for the next stage of their education. 2020 saw the school open a new Nursery Class, we have developed the curriculum with consideration too as to the high quality experiences we wish all 3-4 year olds to have in our nursery – with time given to ‘In the moment’ planning.
What does your child learn at school each day?
The learning is based on the National Curriculum, although as an Academy we can make changes if we desire. The curriculum is so much more than just the individual subjects, although they are of course important.
At Stapleford Community Primary School we use topics to help teach the subjects. These are reviewed regularly by the teachers, who with their own previous experiences and subject specialisms bring the topics alive alongside personalizing the topics with the interests and ideas of the children. We believe that bringing topics alive through using visits and visitors are an important part of learning- often the part of schooling that children recall and reflect on for years. Each year group has a different learning topic or theme. These aim to provide a context for meaningful cross-curricular learning and may incorporate a mixture of subject.
Each term or half term your child’s teacher will share the topic web with you, and are posted on the website. Not all subjects are taught in each half term.
Find information about our curriculum subjects here. Our Curriculum policy is currently under review.