We believe that the St Mark’s Primary School Curriculum fully reflects, embeds and promotes our school vision statement:
‘St Mark’s, a school where children develop a passion to learn; the skills and knowledge to achieve and the confidence to take Christian values into our diverse society.’
We want the children to love coming to school and learning across the whole curriculum. We do our best to make their learning inspiring, exciting and memorable. Most topics begin with some kind of hook to engage the children in their new learning and end with a landing event to bring together everything they have learned across the term. Examples include themed days, varied activities and special visits or events. Teachers endeavour to arrange some kind of event, trip or visit each half term, which is linked to an aspect of the curriculum. These include visits to theatres, sports venues, museums, workshops and experiences of live music.
As we are within Central London, with so many amenities on our door step, we ensure that our curriculum enables our children to explore their local area and celebrate the rich historical, geographical and creative opportunities that are on offer. Yet the school curriculum also takes them beyond their immediate context to explore and experience learning opportunities based across the UK and the world. This enables them to have a sense of their responsibility as both local and global citizens. In addition to this, each year, the children participate in charity events aimed at supporting the homeless and helping with local causes and some based overseas.
Whilst the National Curriculum requirements are fully embedded within our curriculum, we have carefully designed it so that it remains broad, relevant and reflective of our school community. Pupils learn about scientists, artists, authors and other significant people from the local area, across the world and from backgrounds similar to themselves.
We make use of specialist music tutors and sports coaches within the curriculum to help to develop children’s skills and technical abilities in music and PE. We also work with professional artists and musicians in order to provided wider opportunities for participation. Our PSHE curriculum focuses on character development; supports pupils to navigate through some of the challenges and pressures that they currently face in life and which they will face in the future, and prepares them to become active citizens. Embedded within our curriculum are regular opportunities for children to reflect on our school chart values of Compassion, Hard Work, Accountability, Respect and Trust.