The St Mary's Primary School Curriculum

Our Intent- Principle and Purpose

Believe    Hope    Trust

“All children of God in one community, working together.”

In line with the school’s mission, we believe that we are all children of God, in one community, working together. Our school’s embedded values of love, forgiveness, respect, resilience, curiosity and stewardship shape our children's lives not only now but also into adult life.

Through our curriculum, and supported by Catholic Social Teaching, we aim to nurture lifelong learners who are independent thinkers. We seek to equip each child with the knowledge and skills to understand and interact with their world. Our faith, spirituality and school values are the golden thread that run through our curriculum, ensuring that our children flourish and reach their potential in a place where Christ is at the centre of all we do.

Our curriculum has a clear purpose where learning ensures that children are curious and enjoy relevant, localised and engaging experiences. We prioritise building children’s cultural capital by carefully planning theme days and out of school excursions. Our children are challenged and supported to build on prior learning (knowledge, skills, vocabulary and concepts), deepening their understanding which in turn enables them to learn more and remember more.  Ensuring that this knowledge is revisited and built on will enable children to develop understanding that is transferable to different contexts, subjects and to solve and answer different questions.

Using a broad and balanced curriculum that has a clear progression of knowledge and skills, ensures that children from Nursery to Year 6 thrive on their learning adventures. Our curriculum refers to “States of Being”. This means that children become, amongst others, authors, scientists, artists, historians and mathematicians. Children need to have contextualised experiences in the real world and use these to build on and gain subject knowledge.

Through our curriculum our intent is that children will:

• Be immersed in rich language, vocabulary and communication with others.
• Develop a love for reading, so that they can independently access the wider curriculum to enable them to acquire knowledge and understanding. 
• Have opportunities to apply and practise skills.
• Be proud of their local environment but also see themselves as global citizens.
• Embrace and celebrate diversity through celebrations of different faiths and cultures.
• Develop an understanding of British Values and Protected Characteristics.
• Be brave and have the courage to stand up for the rights of others.

We believe that children’s learning and their curriculum should be Intrinsic, Inspirational and Interdependent. We view this as a Trinity Approach to learning.

To find out more about this approach, please follow: Trinity Approach

For more information on the National Curriculum click here.

Explore the subjects of our Curriculum