CURRICULUM INTENT

Overall Curriculum Intent
Our school vision statement, ‘Achievement for all, guided by God’, demonstrates our goal, which is, to strive for every pupil to reach their potential or beyond and gain a life-long love of learning, regardless of their personal circumstances. We have a holistic approach to learning and we aim for every pupil to feel inspired, valued and cared for and to leave The Priory with the following:

Academically: they should reach the expected attainment level for Reading, Writing and Maths at the end of Year 6 or beyond and show an expected or accelerated rate of progress from their individual starting point, within these subjects;

Socially: they demonstrate positive interpersonal skills; showing confidence in a social situation and positively engage with their peers and with other age groups; showing they care and empathy for others; working collaboratively and independently;

Emotionally: they should feel a confident individual, who can express and articulate their feelings well, who has a range of strategies they can apply when faced with a difficult situation, they express all their emotions openly; understanding how to respond to and support their own emotional and mental well-being; they demonstrate an emotional understanding of making the right moral choices and can justify this;

Culturally: they are open minded and relish the opportunity to be a role model of mutual respect among our diverse community, encouraging individuality, tolerance and mutual respect for all; celebrating equality for all and the opportunity to learn about others, their lives’, experiences’, culture, faith and beliefs’ and celebrate our British values and our wonderfully diverse community.

Spiritually: they are tolerant of others beliefs but also have the confidence to articulate their own ideas about spirituality and if they follow their own faith, how this may develop over time.
All these topics are designed to engage every group of children at The Priory, celebrating our rich diversity and mixture of backgrounds. The Priory’s curriculum is a celebration of our local identity in Wimbledon as well as the children’s place in modern Britain and beyond, ensuring that our pupils also learn to take care of their planet and the world around them. Crucially, everything we do is taught with our Christian ethos in mind, as well as the principles of the growth mindset – that through being resilient we can all meet the high challenge of our curriculum and then apply the skills learned in the next stage of our education.

Implementation of the curriculum

At The Priory we believe that ‘Quality First Teaching’ is the key to implementing an effective, creative and enriching curriculum. It encourages and enables students to become more curious, engaged and independent learners, which are what we strive for; promoting challenge and a ‘love’ of learning.

In order to ensure ‘Quality First Teaching’ across the curriculum, we strive for the planning of all subjects to be personalised to each class and the individuals within them. Planning should incorporate clear differentiation, catering for the individual needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs, those who have English as an additional language and for the higher attaining pupils. It should ensure a clear success criteria, so the pupils have an idea of where they are heading; it should detail the modelling of what is expected and discussion around the reasons behind this; providing appropriate challenge for all the pupils within the class. Ensuring open ended and specific targeted questions are clearly identified to support pupils’ understanding and development. ‘Quality First Teaching’ provides the opportunity for teachers and pupils to reflect and evaluate their progress and understanding within lessons, allowing for adaptation and the appropriate response. Thereby modelling to pupils, how to be reflective and respond accordingly.

At The Priory we strongly believe that cultural capital and social status should not disadvantage any pupil and we aim to provide all pupils with the opportunity to succeed and reach their potential, or beyond, by providing an enriching curriculum, full of creative and extra-curricular opportunities.

Monitoring Impact

At The Priory we ensure the effective monitoring of the impact of our curriculum by ensuring our Senior Leadership Team carry out the following activities and support our phase leaders and subject leaders to develop their subject knowledge and experience with managing, supporting and monitoring a subject:

Planning audits, book audits, learning walks, reviewing the learning environments, lesson observations, data analysis and pupil voice.

An evaluation of all of the above activities feeds in to their subject review and leads to their subject action plan. Each subject leader regularly updates and informs the school governor of their subject on the monitoring and evaluation of their subject. These can feed into our overall School Development Plan, if appropriate.

Click here for our whole school overview of the curriculum topics