Curriculum Statement & Planning Documents

Curriculum Intent - What we are trying to achieve through the curriculum?

At Edgware Primary have worked collaboratively to design our unique Edgware Curriculum which is underpinned by our whole school vision and values and is personalised to the needs of our community. Whilst it is vital that our children learn what is in the statutory National Curriculum, we recognise that they need much more than this. 

As an accredited Thinking School, we believe in lifelong learning and the notion that learning should be enjoyable, within a nurturing and inclusive environment. Thinking is at the very heart of our curriculum. We place emphasis on developing critical thinkers, independent and self-regulated learners. We want our pupils to have the confidence and skills to ask questions and find answers independently. Through our engaging, bespoke and balanced curriculum, we encourage reflective and creative thinking and inspire our children to bring their own experiences and ideas.

We equip our pupils with the broad skills, rich knowledge, understanding and tools necessary to develop as resilient learners. We give all pupils, including children who are disadvantaged and with SEND, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed. We ensure that we embrace the cultural diversity of our families and this is reflected in our curriculum. In the process of teaching diversity and promoting equality and inclusion, we help pupils to develop a multitude of valuable attitudes and transferable skills such as acceptance and tolerance.

We prepare children for the next stage of their life and life after school. As Art Costa says "Not just a life of tests, but for the tests of life". 

We develop three key, interconnected areas in our pupils, drawing on the research of James Mannion (2020)

Metacognition: Monitoring and controlling what's in your head/thinking.

Self-Regulation:  Monitoring how you react with your environment; relationships with yourself and others

Self-Regulated Learning: Application of metacognition and self-regulation and learning. 

We systematically plan and carefully sequence our teaching in order to promote learning, reinforce key knowledge and skills, provide challenge and clear progression. 

We are a Trauma Informed School and knowledge of Trauma is embedded in our practice. We use various tools and interventions to ensure our children are well supported. 

We focus on mental health, personal growth and development. We do this by exploring behaviour, morals & values, attitudes, choices and mindset and by celebrating diversity, all of which are openly taught and form a really important part of our implicit curriculum. The curriculum is meticulously planned to ensure children acquire key knowledge and the application of skills. 

In addition, we tailor our curriculum as follows:

- At school level we plan in opportunities to provide children with experiences they would not en masse otherwise have (e.g. stage performances, Shakespeare productions, enterprise schemes, art galleries, art exhibitions, museums, places of worship, music tuition, careers day, themed weeks and aspirational talks), and we make best use of our specific location. We work closely with our local community and have strong links with a local old peoples’ home, the Church, the synagogue and the local police.

- We have a specific mental health curriculum promoting wellbeing and teaching children how to look after their own mental wellness. Children are supported by peer mental health champions and staff trained in this area.

- We have a comprehensive safeguarding curriculum which ensures children understanding of how to stay safe online, promotes British values and equips every child with the knowledge and skills required for personal safeguarding. 

- At an individual level we enable each child to access the curriculum and meet the learning objectives set through the support we give each child; our expectations of progress are uniformly high for all pupils. We insist that all teachers treat prior lower attaining pupils the same as any other pupil and set challenging lesson targets (success criteria) for all.

- Apart from our ECTs, every class teacher is a subject leader and appreciates the importance of very strong subject knowledge.  We are a school that expects subject leaders to become expert in their subject. In their subject leadership roles they support their colleagues. Bespoke long, medium and short term plans are in place for all subjects.  Cross-curricular links are made with each subject where appropriate. We are in particular focusing on reading and vocabulary across the curriculum.

- Our objectives are that children should be sufficiently robust in their knowledge so as to apply this and their skills across the broad curriculum. We actively plan opportunities to support this.

'THINKING MINDS' CURRICULUM APPROACH

Our ambitious curriculum is made up of two major strands:  

CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION- How is the curriculum delivered? 

Our curriculum is underpinned by thinking tools and Rosenshine's principles of instruction to support our planning and delivery of learning.

The requirements of the Edgware Curriculum (including National and Local requirements) are mapped out at whole school level by Senior Leaders and Subject Leaders. Individual year groups then plan the curriculum to meet the needs of the pupils they are teaching. This is then adjusted for individual classes.

Training and support from Subject Leaders ensures that staff have the necessary subject knowledge to deliver the curriculum.

Formative and summative pupil assessment informs our practice and in particular enables us to appropriately challenge every pupil.  It is our mission to enable all children to meet the lesson objectives and our uniformly high expectations.

The curriculum is planned thoroughly, starting with the children's current knowledge and skills, so that real progress can be made and measured.

Developing the children’s ‘sticky knowledge’ and automaticity is central to our approach. This allows for the repeating / developing of knowledge and skills and in doing so deepening children’s knowledge, understanding and skills.

Monitoring is central to leaders and class teachers’ work.  This is achieved through dialogue with pupils, in depth scrutiny of pupils’ work, monitoring of planning, lesson drop ins and dialogue with staff. Through monitoring and evaluation we have a clear understanding of pupils’ progress and standards, and can address the needs of each individual pupil.

This protocol ensures subject leaders and teachers know what precisely is being taught, and in what order, so that pupils know more, remember more and can do more.  This also ensures that class teachers and subject leaders have a shared understanding of appropriate challenge and of the extent to which learned information is retained long term.

IMPACT - What difference is the Edgware Curriculum making? 

• From their different starting points, all children will make at least good progress and achieve their potential academically, emotionally, creatively, socially and physically. Knowledge, understanding and skills will be secured and embedded so that children attain highly.
• Children will have core skills in English and Maths, will know more and remember more. They will use these for the next part of their education and well into the future.
• They will be kind, respectful and honest, demonstrate inclusive attitudes, have a strong moral compass and have a sense of what their role is in our wider society.
• They will develop a sense of self-awareness and become confident in their own abilities.
• They will demonstrate emotional resilience and the ability to persevere when they encounter challenge.
• Children will have a love for learning, skills and knowledge for life. Children will leave us well rounded, having developed academically, socially and emotionally. Children will have ambition and want to take their learning into the future to improve their life chances. 

Pupil Mobility

Our school is expert at absorbing children with EAL and low standards into every year group. We have many children join us in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6. The progress our pupils make is significantly understated in headline numbers because of the progress made by our latecomers, which does not feature in published results.