Over the past five years, we have worked together as a teaching team to design a truly excellent curriculum for our students: one which will nurture curious, collaborative, creative global learners with the rich knowledge and confident oracy that will empower every student to thrive whether they choose to contribute to their local community or to sail away across the wider world.

We believe that every aspect of our children’s learning should have meaning and purpose. We have the privileged opportunity to guide each child’s learning journey from the ages of 3 to 16, allowing us to take a holistic approach to building a coherent curriculum, all parts of which lead to authentic outcomes and powerful preparation for life beyond school.

Our curriculum design philosophy is underpinned by four key strands of thinking: substantive content, guiding disciplinary concepts, adventurous and ethical connections, and confident communication.

In January 2017, we began our inspiring project to bring our Primary and Secondary curricula together to create a coherent, connected learning journey for all children, growing from the EYFS through all the Key Stages to GCSE and preparation for post-16 education. 

This project has grown and evolved over the past five years, starting with the identification of the challenges and the opportunities created by the design of a holistic 13 year journey which would minimise transition difficulties and maximise knowledge, understanding and love of learning throughout the school. Key concepts were discussed and identified for each subject area, and new subject leadership teams created to map out how we would enable all children to ‘Become a Historian / Scientist / Musician etc.’. In such a small school, every teacher becomes a subject leader and curriculum designer.

By the end of the 2020-21 school year, all curricula were clearly mapped out, and each curriculum team has contributed to staff training on how disciplinary learning in their subject area is implemented. This curriculum is not frozen at the point of design: at all stages, teaching and learning is being continuously improved in the light of our research so that students’ experiences are increasingly broad, balanced and joined up. Through Primary topic webs and Secondary horizontal plans, we are also able to identify powerful interdisciplinary links which can be developed through our REAL Projects to maximise cross-curricular learning. You can see an example of how our through school Curriculum Narratives can be used to track character and values teaching in the Eco-Links Curriculum Narrative below.

The links below show how our curriculum is implemented in (and outside) the classroom at both phases. The subject pages are regularly updated to show the most up to date mapped out through school curricula. The History page gives an example of a completed 3-16 ‘Becoming Historians’ curriculum approach.

From EYFS and Key Stage 1, the school follows the Read Write Inc. phonics programme. This is a highly-structured and effective programme, initially taught in whole-class groups, developing into small group teaching sessions.

Our reading scheme is made up from books from a range of publishers, which help our children to develop a love of reading while selecting within a choice at their appropriate level.

As the children develop in fluency, towards the end of Key Stage 1, they will be ready to join the Accelerated Reader programme.