Statement of intent

At St Philip’s Catholic Primary School, we understand the importance of a well-rounded, fulfilling curriculum to prepare our pupils for the next stage of education, and for their future as citizens of the UK. We have high expectations for all of the children at St Philip’s to achieve well, demonstrate fluency with basic skills and to experience support and appropriate challenge through all stages the primary curriculum. Through careful sequencing and ongoing retrieval practise, we ensure that skills are build upon and applied with accuracy.

Vision

The aim at St Philip’s Catholic Primary School is to provide opportunities for children to develop as independent, confident, successful learners with high aspirations who know how to make a positive contribution to their community and the wider society. As a thriving Catholic School, our Catholic ethos is at the core of our curriculum. We ensure that all of our pupils respect each other and have respect for people of all faiths, race and gender. Everyone has the right to be treated with respect and dignity and our school has a focus on developing children’s moral, spiritual, social and cultural understanding. St Philip’s Catholic Primary School ensures that children are well prepared for life in modern Britain.

The Implementation of our Curriculum

There is a detailed plan for every subject of the curriculum where each subject is split into curriculum units for each year group.

Units of work are carefully sequenced to ensure they build upon each other to reinforce and extend previous learning. The curriculum for each subject is cross referenced to what has been learnt before and what will be learnt in the future.

The curriculum is also matched to the Catholic Schools Pupil Profile as well as the principles of Catholic Social Teaching to ensure explicit links between the spiritual and academic values and the lesson content.

Within each curriculum unit of work, the knowledge and skills of the curriculum are the focus and lessons are carefully planned to ensure that the 'golden nuggets' of the curriculum are embedded and developed. 

Teachers use a wide range of resources to plan the curriculum, including published schemes of work where these match our own curriculum plan.

We make use of Sandwell Music Services to support our Music lessons, they visit us each Monday and every child in school receives a music lesson. Singing, pitch and rhythm being the focus in KS1, while our KS2 children all have the opportunity to learn to play a range of instruments.

To support our PE lessons the children enjoy a lesson taught by their class teacher, and children across school also have the opportunity to learn to swim. 

We alternate the teaching of both Geography/History and Art/DT. This takes place on a half-termly basis, we have carefully planned our coverage of these subjects to ensure that children receive a targeted unit of learning on each key strand within the subject to meet the expectations of the National Curriculum

Monitoring the Impact of our Curriculum

The quality of provision in every subject throughout the year is monitored by school leaders using a range of monitoring tools.

Pupil interviews are also conducted regularly and great care is taken to listen to the views of children so that we can ensure they are engaged, motivated and inspired by our curriculum. We are constantly adapting our curriculum to meet the needs of pupils.

Attainment and progress data is collected every term and is carefully analysed to identify any gaps in learning that need reteaching. The children's attainment and progress is also carefully analysed to look for trends and address weaknesses where these exist.

School leaders and subject leaders prepare action plans every year to develop and improve the provision for each subject.