Suckley School
Happy, Aspirational and Ready for Life
Curriculum Intent, Implementation and Impact
What do we intend Suckley School’s Curriculum to achieve?
Our intent is to deliver a curriculum which develops a wide range of skills and knowledge such as an enquiring mind, creativity, language and communication skills, as well as the values and social skills needed in everyday life. We strive to make our school curriculum engaging, broad and balanced. We want our children at Suckley to be 'hooked' into learning and to be left with memorable experiences that will shape them for life, and to achieve the highest standards that they possibly can.
Suckley School’s curriculum places the learning journey of all of our pupils at its heart. Our curriculum aims to promote curiosity and to instil in them a strong passion for learning and enquiry. We build children’s aspirations demonstrating possibilities for their future lives, and the rigour of our curriculum supports this aim. Our values underpin all that we do in school fostering kindness, perseverance, determination, honesty, respect and independence. We understand the importance of communication and language and ensure this underpins our planning. This focus strengthens our pupils’ ability to learn at a deeper level, allowing them to articulate their learning. Additionally, our curriculum allows for our pupils to demonstrate high quality thinking and to apply skills and knowledge confidently and competently. Physical and mental wellbeing are prioritised within our curriculum allowing children opportunities to exhibit spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding. We consider our duty to foster equality, ensuring our curriculum addresses disadvantage and aspires to close the gap.
How do we implement Suckley School’s Curriculum?
Our starting point is with the agreed skills, knowledge and values that we want our children to leave Suckley School with, woven alongside the National Curriculum. All foundation subjects are planned so that skills and knowledge are taught and developed further as children move up through the school. Our skills and knowledge progression map determines much of what is to be taught and our Suckley Curriculum increasingly determines how it is taught.
Using expertise and passion for subjects they lead, subject leaders and teachers have carefully designed a holistic curriculum which balances the national expectations and an all- encompassing range of experiences allowing our children to flourish. Strategic planning allows the curriculum to be a dynamic structure through which pupils enjoy, progress, and excel.
The Suckley School curriculum has high expectations to combine deep knowledge and understanding with transferable skills. It is delivered with the intent of allowing pupils to develop a wide breadth of vocabulary and opportunities to apply knowledge and skills across the curriculum. This is supported by inviting, classroom environments which stimulate and engage quality thinking and reasoning. Teaching and learning is responsive to children’s needs.
We also include our children in the planning process, from the generating of questions they would like answered to the choosing of specific projects they wish to complete. By involving the children in the planning we believe that learning becomes more exciting for our children, relates to current events, the children themselves, their experiences and the community around them. We strive to enrich learning with local links, and with wider experiences brought into the classroom, or sought outside of it.
These wider experiences are carefully planned into our curriculum to offer support, foster our values culture and ensure that our children benefit from a full range of academic, spiritual, moral, social and cultural activities.
What is the impact of Suckley School’s Curriculum?
Children leave our school with a secure understanding of the academic content; with the understanding of how to be socially, morally, spiritually and culturally responsible and aware; how to make positive contributions to the local community and how to endeavour to be the best they can be. Our children will have fully rounded characters with a clear understanding of values such as honesty, kindness, perseverance and determination. Only by really learning what these mean will our learners be able to develop a character that prepares them for living in the community demonstrating tolerance and equality. We measure this not just by the work our children produce, but in the behaviours we see each and every day in all learners on the playground, in corridors, and in the many roles we give them. The impact of this is seen in the daily interaction of all members of our community, including staff and children.
It is seen by how the children approach challenges every day. This could be on the playground, in a game or disagreement, or in class in a complex learning challenge. The impact that is seen is that children don’t give up, are highly motivated to succeed and achieve and are equipped with all the personal skills to do this.
We use monitoring strategies throughout the year to measure the impact of the curriculum content, design, and approach. Leadership at all levels, monitor individual subjects through reviewing learning, evaluating pupil voice, providing individual feedback to move practice forward, celebrating positives and highlighting areas of development. Teachers use assessment for learning strategies to evaluate, adjust, and maximise the impact of the curriculum on pupil outcomes. Our whole school team strengthens our ethos and vision as we work together to reflect upon our curriculum and share outcomes driving forward next steps. As a diverse school community, we believe our children possess unique talents, skills and qualities. Our school ethos is firmly rooted in our values with ‘happy, aspirational, ready for life’ learners.