Statement of Intent
At St Philip’s Catholic Primary School, we understand the importance of a well-rounded, fulfilling curriculum to prepare our pupils for the next stage of education, and for their future as citizens of the UK. We have high expectations for all of the children at St Philip’s to achieve well, demonstrate fluency with basic skills and to experience support and appropriate challenge through all stages the primary curriculum. Through careful sequencing and ongoing retrieval practise, we ensure that skills are built upon and applied with accuracy.
The aim at St Philip’s Catholic Primary School is to provide opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident, successful learners with high aspirations who know how to make a positive contribution to their community and the wider society. As a thriving Catholic School, our Catholic ethos is at the core of our curriculum. We ensure that all of our pupils respect each other and have respect for people of all faiths, race and gender. Everyone has the right to be treated with respect and dignity and our school has a focus on developing children’s moral, spiritual, social and cultural understanding. St Philip’s Catholic Primary School ensures that children are well prepared for life in modern Britain and the next steps in learning.
The focus on curriculum development is carefully designed to ensure coverage and progression in knowledge and skills. This is to ensure that curriculum area skills and knowledge that are learnt are transferable and developed to avoid cumulative disfluency as our children move up in school. St Philip’s Catholic Primary School provides pupils with memorable experiences and opportunities to enrich the children’s learning and develop a range of transferable skills. Our aim for our curriculum to engender a sense of pride in achievement, for our children to understand how their learning will impact on their real world and community, to prepare our children for the challenges in modern Britain, to embed key skills in core areas such as reading with fluency and comprehension and a secure grasp of number for all of our children, and to develop knowledge that is purposeful to support our children as global citizens.
St Philip’s Catholic Primary School provides a highly inclusive environment where learners enjoy their education. Pupils at all levels are helped to achieve their potential. Those who are most able are challenged by being encouraged to expand their skills and knowledge through varied curriculum opportunities. Those who require further support receive early intervention and targeted support to embed skills in order to support them to develop at their own pace and to learn in a style that best suits their individual needs. Our carefully crafted curriculum aims to close gaps early to address misconceptions and avoid cumulative disfluency. The impact of our curriculum is evident through the achievements of our children, final outcomes of curriculum areas and themes, the embedding of skills and knowledge to prepare them for the next stage of their education, their love of reading and their clear respect for one another within our diverse community.
Our curriculum enrichments provide a variety of benefits and help to foster multiple life skills. Our pupils develop interests and skills, build independence, and establish interpersonal skills with their peers. Our curriculum enrichments take on many forms such as starting with enrichments (e.g. inviting a guest speaker at the beginning of a topic), working towards an enrichment (such as developing knowledge before a class visit to explore areas that they have learnt about) or by incorporating enrichments side by side with learning (such as maintaining our sustainable school garden within a science lesson).
In addition to this, sport has a very high profile at St Philip’s Catholic Primary School and our children receive the opportunity to be introduced to a huge range of activities such as football, athletics, cricket and tag rugby as well as specialist provision for weekly swimming, gymnastics and dance. At St Philip’s sport has been successful in engaging many children including our disadvantaged children and those with SEN. It has also increased confidence in our pupils and has taught many life skills such as teamwork, determination, perseverance and acceptance of winning/losing.
Catholic School’s Pupil Profile
Our curriculum aims to have nurtured the values of the Catholic Schools Pupil Profile within all of the children by the time they complete Key Stage 2.
The values of the Catholic Schools Pupil Profile are spiritual, personal and academic values that will prepare children both for the next stage in their education and also for adult life.
Catholic Social Teachings
Our curriculum also aims to embed the catholic social teachings of stewardship, solidarity, dignity of the human person, community, care for the poor and rights and responsibilities throughout all subjects and dedicated worship time.
Further supported by the Mission Team and Mini Vinnies, children will be instilled with these teachings to become well rounded, caring and compassionate young people and adults.
Promoting fundamental British values
Citizens of the UK should:
We believe that our curriculum underpins the fundamental British values to:
We promote fundamental British values throughout our curriculum. Examples of how each year group promotes these values and prepares our pupils for life in modern Britain, can be seen in the curriculum plans published on our website.
The implementation of our curriculum
There is a detailed plan for every subject of the curriculum where each subject is split into curriculum units for each year group.
Units of work are carefully sequenced to ensure they build upon each other to reinforce and extend previous learning. The curriculum for each subject is carefully cross referenced to what has been learnt before and what will be learnt in the future.
The curriculum is also matched to the Catholic School’s Pupil Profile and we make explicit links between the spiritual and academic values and the lesson content.
Within each curriculum unit of work, the lesson content is broken into component chunks that build together towards a composite piece of learning within the subject.
We use a range of resources to help us deliver our curriculum, including published schemes of work where these match our own curriculum plan.
Monitoring the Impact of our Curriculum
School leaders and subject leaders monitor the quality of the provision in every subject throughout the year using a range of monitoring tools.
Subject monitoring includes lesson observations, book scrutiny and pupil interviews. Great care is taken to listen to the views of children so that we can ensure they are engaged and motivated by our curriculum. We are constantly adapting our curriculum to meet the needs of pupils.
Attainment and progress data is collected every term and is carefully analysed to identify any gaps in learning that need reteaching. Data is also carefully analysed to look for trends and address weaknesses where these exist.
School leaders and subject leaders prepare action plans every year to develop and improve the provision for each subject
Please see our English curriculum page for information regarding Phonics, Reading and Writing at St. Philip's
Please see our Maths curriculum page for information regarding our Maths Curriculum at St. Philip's
Please see our RE curriculum page for information regarding our RE curriculum at St. Philip's
Art and DT
Physical Education (PE)