Our Learning Principles and our commitment to the Rights Respecting Agenda make explicit the values and principles that underpin all of the learning that takes place. We are an inclusive Church of England primary school: across our curriculum, acts of worship and wider school life, the principles of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs are explicitly taught,upheld and cherished. How we promote these values can be seen in our audit of provision for British values and community cohesion.
We very much value and appreciate the learning benefits of modern technology in all of its forms. However, we also fully recognise the need to keep children safe online by ensuring they understand and comply with safe practices when using their devices. As an e-safety school
we ensure that our curriculum explicitly teaches children the rules and practices that will enable them to harness and use safely the power of information and communication technology.
We want our curriculum to be meaningful, coherent and engaging for our children, so although we recognise the importance of the discrete knowledge, skills and understanding of each individual subject, we arrange our schemes of work into thematic topics each term. This enables us to make meaningful links between subjects which deepen children’s learning and understanding. We recognise not all curriculum subjects can or should be linked to our topics and where this is the case these areas of learning are planned for separately.
Our choice of topics is guided by two factors: firstly, what we must cover as requirements of the National Curriculum and secondly, our own children’s interests and needs. Teachers are free to use their creativity, intellect and flair to determine the direction of their schemes of work so they are inspired to deliver learning that excites, engages and develops the children in their classrooms.
In terms of curriculum planning, we believe in the principle of quality over quantity and feel our flexible topic-based approach ensures deep learning, although not at the expense of the intellectual integrity of individual subject areas.
Each class teacher is responsible and accountable for the quality of the learning that takes place in their classroom each day. Detailed and appropriately differentiated planning is prepared weekly by all teachers to ensure the curriculum meets the learning needs of all children.
We judge the effectiveness of our curriculum provision on the engagement, progress and attainment achieved by our children relative to their starting point. Parents and children frequently tell us how much they enjoy the content and learning activities offered through our curriculum.
In line with our learning principles we believe we provide our children with the foundations to leave St Margaret's at Hasbury as confident, well-rounded individuals, ready and able to take on the challenges of their secondary education.