Curriculum Statement
At St Augustine's Primary School, we strive to create a safe, nurturing Catholic environment where every child is valued and supported within a community rooted in Gospel values, with Christ at its heart. Our goal is to honour the dignity of each child as a unique individual and a child of God.
Through a broad, balanced, and inclusive curriculum, we provide inspiring and challenging learning experiences for all pupils, regardless of ability, background, or gender. High-quality teaching ensures that every child’s potential is recognised, needs are met, and achievements are celebrated. Our aspirational curriculum opens doors to future possibilities, empowering children to dream big and reach their full potential.
Our curriculum is designed with a clear purpose: to foster independence, motivation, and a strong sense of responsibility in our learners as future citizens. This core intent is woven into all our teaching and learning.
Aims:
- That children develop life-long learning behaviours through independence, collaboration and personal discovery.
- That all children are empowered from the earliest opportunity, to be enthusiastic, self-motivated and resilient learners.
- That through the high expectations of the whole school community, all children are inspired to nurture a passion for learning.
- That all children benefit from teaching that recognises different learning styles and encourages them to be creative.
- That all children benefit from learning within a positive and caring learning environment where all achievements are acknowledged and valued.
- That all children are challenged to reach their full potential and ‘be the best that they can be’
Our curriculum incorporates the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum, used as a starting point from which to expand and deepen knowledge through experiences and opportunities which best meet the learning and developmental needs of our pupils. We want our children to question learning, to self-organise and feel comfortable enough to take calculated risks.
In Nursery and Reception we follow the Early Years Statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, published in March 2014 by the DfES. This framework specifies the requirement for learning and development in the early years and provides specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum. These areas are:
- Personal, Social and Emotional development
- Physical Development
- Communication and Language development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
At St Augustine’s we aim to foster a love of reading and language in all our children right from the start. We teach phonics through the Little Wandle Scheme and use a variety of reading schemes to promote the development of reading fluency and comprehension skills. We recognise that children learn in a variety of ways and aim to develop strategies that allow them to learn in a way which suits them best. We aim to encourage all of our children to enjoy listening to stories and reading for pleasure.
Through our core and foundation curriculum we want to encourage our children to learn in a purposeful way; develop inquisitive minds and have the ability to reflect on and evaluate their own learning. Teaching and learning ensures that knowledge and skills are taught explicitly and there are opportunities for connections to be made with different curriculum areas. We aim to cultivate a language rich curriculum in which the development of vocabulary is key in every subject and phase.
We have also developed a series of Learning Powers within school that support our children to understand how we learn and enable them to become better learners as a result. This has become a school-wide culture that nurtures positive habits and attitudes, equipping learners to approach challenges with confidence, resilience, and creativity. When children believe in their ability to learn, they become more engaged, focused, and motivated: leading to deeper thinking, faster progress, and a greater enjoyment of learning.
As well as our own staff, we employ a specialist teacher who supports the delivery of physical education. All subject leaders are given training and opportunities to keep developing their own subject knowledge, skills and understanding, so that they can support curriculum development and their colleagues throughout the school.
At St Augustine’s we seek opportunities to extend and enhance the curriculum through a range of activities, such as residential trips, visits, sporting events, visiting speakers and a range of after school clubs.
The core subjects of the National Curriculum are being followed by every child from Y1-Y6 and continuous assessment is integrated into the curriculum. The Foundation Stage Profile takes place at the end of the Reception year. A phonic screening check takes place for children in Y1.. The Multiplication Times Tables Check takes place at the enfd of Y4. National tests (SATs) are carried out for Y6 children at the end of Y6.
For more detailed information about specific learning within each year group, please see individual class pages.