At St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, ‘curriculum’ is viewed as encompassing all learning opportunities that pupils participate in.  This involves our taught curriculum and the other curriculum opportunities that exist outside of the classroom.  Our curriculum planning is constantly evolving and encourages active pupil participation.  We believe that active learning takes place when pupils are directly involved in the learning process, so consider children’s individual knowledge and interests.  All children have equal access to the curriculum and are treated fairly regardless of race, religion or abilities.

Learning is collectively viewed as something which leads to change in our long term memory.  This takes place over a period of time and occurs through repeated opportunities to build procedural and semantic knowledge.  This understanding of learning is evidenced in classroom teaching at St Mary’s, for example through the application of Rosenshine’s principles when planning lessons and in classroom practice.

As a Catholic school, our curriculum is underpinned by the Gospel values as outlined in our school mission statement and the Academy Trust’s overarching ‘Vision of Excellence’ document.  The principles of Catholic Social Teaching and Catholic virtues influence our curriculum design and implementation as detailed below.

Our curriculum aims to:

• Provide a broad curriculum that maintains a rigorous focus on academic success, whilst fostering pupils’ creativity and innovation.
• Support the spiritual and moral development of each pupil, by engaging in curriculum themes that are inspired by Catholic Social Teaching and the Catholic Virtues, which celebrate diversity, value others, and develop a sense of personal worth. Through this holistic approach it is our intention that pupils
• Help pupils to develop a sense of stewardship, by learning about the world in which they live and building an appreciation of the interdependence of individuals, groups, and nations.
• Develop effective learning attributes by providing repeated opportunities to develop skills such as resilience, reciprocity, resourcefulness and reflectiveness through all curriculum subjects, through the school’s Building Learning Power initiative.
• Encourage pupil leadership skills, e.g. Prefects, Buddies, Mental Health Ambassadors, Peer Mentors, Digital Leaders, Fair Trade Champion, School Councillors (including Eco-Committee and Wildlife Champions) and a sense of empowerment.
• Enable pupils to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to prepare them for their next stage of education and for life in an ever-changing world through developing ‘powerful knowledge (Young, 2008), or ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1977) through following a curriculum which enables pupils to develop disciplinary skills and knowledge across all National Curriculum areas.

These curriculum aims underpin the long, medium and short term planning that takes place at St Mary’s Catholic Primary School.

Further information about our curriculum and how it is organised can be found in our Curriculum Policy.