Waterloo Primary School

Our vision is:

• Every child a reader
• Every child a writer
• Every child numerate
• Everyone respectful

Curriculum Intent

We are a school in an area of high deprivation. Many of our pupils come from homes where the challenges of low income and social deprivation have a significant impact on their personal and educational development. We are committed to securing equity and improving pupils’ life opportunities. Therefore, we provide:

• a strong foundation in reading, writing, mathematics and communication skills;
• a word-rich environment enhancing vocabulary and reading;
• a curriculum which ensures knowledge and understanding of the world around them;
• a curriculum which values subject specialisms and the unique subject disciplines to enable pupils to develop knowledge of the wide range of training and employment opportunities which they can aspire to in the future;
• a wide range of cultural experiences;
• a curriculum which nurtures all elements of well-being for our pupils and the sense of community.

Our ambition is to ensure high achievement for all pupils, including disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND. In designing our curriculum, we have taken account of the wide-ranging social and economic backgrounds of our families and the diverse cultures which our families come from.

Curriculum Breadth and Depth

Our leaders work together to ensure a curriculum of breadth and ambition. We have considered the ambition for our pupils based on the context of our school, our pupils’ gaps in knowledge and the barriers they have. We have considered the knowledge which is of most value to them to ensure they are educated citizens of the future. We have looked at how our community can add value and have planned our curriculum accordingly.

Our curriculum delivers the EYFS Framework and statutory National Curriculum, and offers importance to all subjects. It includes religious education and age-appropriate relationship and sex education. Basic skills underpin the curriculum and allow our pupils to achieve in all subjects.

We want to motivate and inspire our pupils to achieve so that they can go on to have happy and successful lives. Our curriculum aims to be broad, balanced and ambitious for all.

We want to celebrate the diversity of our school community through our curriculum and the many languages our pupils speak through celebration of religious festivals, sharing stories about other cultures and experiences based around other cultures.

Many of our pupils come from low-income households so our curriculum ensures that they have experiences that they may otherwise not have had. This will include visits to local places of natural beauty, the city of Manchester and its rich history and culture, local universities and places of interest which celebrate the industrial past of the town our pupils live in.  The curriculum also provides opportunity for pupils to learn about local people who have made big achievements in their lives.

Progression and sequencing/spacing

Our curriculum has been designed to ensure each subject has logical progression of knowledge and skills to ensure pupils make connections in their learning, resulting in our pupils knowing and remembering more long term. When designing the curriculum, we thought about the context of our school, the gaps in knowledge our pupils have and what the most valuable knowledge is that we can give our pupils in each subject. We identified key concepts in each subject and used these to inform our decisions about what should be taught and when. We identified key end points for each subject to ensure pupils make strong progress across all subjects. The learning of academic and subject specific language is embedded in all subjects.

Our curriculum adds value to learning through providing a range of experiences which complement learning across the curriculum. This also involves working with external partnerships to enhance our curriculum offer.

A Curriculum where reading is priority

Reading has the highest priority at our school. It enables pupils to access the full curriculum. Pupils learn to read from day one in reception- and earlier if they attend our nursery. They access a programme of systematic synthetic phonics delivered by highly trained staff. They assess pupils regularly to ensure that each child makes good progress. Any child who falls behind is quickly identified and given the support they need to catch up.

Communication and language are at the heart of our early curriculum offer as our pupils often come in with low language skills. We ensure that our environments are language rich with adults modelling ambitious vocabulary through speech and writing. Reading runs through our entire curriculum, with books carefully chosen and used deliberately to meet our pupils’ needs, to give them wide experiences of the world through a mixture of classic and modern literature and non-fiction books.

Curriculum Implementation

High quality plans support high quality teaching. Teachers’ deliver challenging and engaging lessons. High quality professional development ensures teachers and teaching assistants have strong subject knowledge.

 Subject leaders understand their subject. They know how pupils develop their knowledge and skills from study unit to study unit and from year to year. They provide support and training for teachers. They review curriculum plans and check the quality of pupils’ learning. We are committed to ensuring our pupils have access to high quality resources to learn from.

Effective pedagogy for teaching and learning is embedded across the school. Leaders check, model and support teachers in class ensuring consistency.

Teachers use carefully chosen strategies to:

• Present information clearly enabling pupils to understand key concepts
• Check pupils’ understanding, identify and correct mistakes and misconceptions
• Ensure that pupils embed key concepts in their long-term memory and apply them fluently
• Deliver the subject curriculum in a way that allows pupils to transfer key knowledge to long-term memory.
• Sequence learning so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and pupils work towards defined end points.
• Assess pupils’ understanding in order to inform further teaching, and to help pupils embed and use knowledge fluently
• Enable pupils to develop their understanding and link prior knowledge to new learning.

Assessment

Our assessment systems ensure that pupils embed knowledge. They also help teachers provide clear next steps for pupils. We collect data six times each year. This is in line with The Teacher Advisory Workload Report – ‘Making Data Work’. The data from these collections is collated for teachers. They analyse the data to inform school actions. Leaders are mindful of teacher workload. They review the school systems to ensure they do not create unnecessary burdens.

Curriculum Impact

Leaders check the impact of the curriculum using qualitative and quantitative data. Leaders to check what pupils have learned from against the intended curriculum plans. We monitor attainment and progress in varying ways specific to each subject. We gather other data and information through a wide range of self-evaluation activities and use the information to review the curriculum.