Curriculum Statement
Our Curriculum Statement
Our curriculum intent begins with the national curriculum objectives that provide a secure foundation for our curriculum. The FORT curriculum content is ever-changing, evolving with and appropriate to the individual cohorts of children throughout our schools. The knowledge and skills taught have been carefully woven and interconnected in relation to a series of learning units/themes which are related to our locality/environment, key figures, our aspirations and understanding of the wider world and cultures. We use cornerstones as a starting point for which we build bespoke units of work. These topics blend and allow conceptual links to be built across the curriculum while always celebrating our individual subjects.
Our topics are underwritten by carefully chosen and high-quality texts; reading is given a high status in our curriculum. This is reflected in the recent addition of Reading and Writing pathways within our curriculum. As our children’s knowledge and skills grow, so our curriculum develops. We carefully build our themed lessons to teach and interconnect knowledge and skills across the discrete subjects of Art, Geography, History and Design Technology. This holistic approach aims to provide technically, academically, morally, emotionally and socially wise yet curious children who are ready to develop their future selves.
Learning is more than the acquisition of knowledge and skills but is about our experiences together, which produce a sense of spirit and a passion for life itself.
Our curriculum has been designed to ensure equality for all pupils, ensuring they have a full and diverse learning experience. This is achieved through adaptation and modification which are matched to their needs.
Our core values are the foundation to all we do in the FORT federation. We also place great importance on the learning behaviours which are explicitly encouraged within our schools. They are essential to each child’s journey towards personal, cognitive, social, emotional, cultural and physical development and fulfilment within the FORT community.
We aim to develop:
COURAGE: to demonstrate emotional stamina and vigour, passion, or inner drive to achieve. To show courageous advocacy.
CURIOSITY: To be curious about everything- to take risks and try something new often.
Show COMMITMENT, DEDICATION and ENDURANCE in what we do – things in life are hard; we teach our children to power through.
WISDOM: to be able to think and act using your knowledge, experience, compassion alongside good judgement.
RESILIENCE: to build you own personal resilience - we fail in life and make mistakes, but we can resolve these, dust ourselves off and start again.
HAPPINESS: we find happiness in the smallest of places, remembering there is always HOPE … the FORT Federation is a happy place to be!
The implementation of our curriculum is organised through mixed aged classes and following a rolling cycle of two years’ children cover all the required national curriculum objectives. Each class work through a series of themes that will last for 3-6 weeks depending on the learning planned. These are represented in curriculum maps. The themes allow pupils to fully immerse themselves in the topic and see the results of their learning as the work progresses.
Themed days/weeks are based around our curriculum priorities, such as World Book Day or our school PARCH values, Sparkle Days, Science week, creation week and provides the school with an opportunity to work across year groups and classes capitalising on different teachers’ expertise.
From time to time, a day event - whole school, class or year group- will be organised to celebrate an occasion, promote an idea or consolidate and enrich learning, for example, May Day dancing, Sports Day, Bulb show.
Learning goes beyond the classroom, taking advantage of the locality and school grounds, and is enhanced by visitors with specific expertise and wide experiences. These include day trips, extra-curricular clubs and residential visits. It is clearly demonstrated through our partnership work across our learning communities and the impressive variety of sporting events and school networks that have been formed.
The impact of the curriculum is measured in standards achieved, progress made, and personal qualities acquired.
The impact of our curriculum is seen in:
- High standards: consistently performing at above national and Devon averages.
-
Progress which builds incrementally year-on-year at a pace and momentum appropriate to each individual learner.
-
Quality experiences which are memorable, worthwhile and challenging.
-
Teaching, which is rigorous, personalised, innovative and learning-centred.
-
Learners that are resilient, questioning, resourceful, self-sufficient.
-
Self-aware learners, with well-formed characters, who have a thirst for learning and see it as a route to maximising their life’s chances.
-
Individuals who value and respect one another and demonstrate the PARCH values in action.
The impact of the curriculum is regularly reviewed, developed, monitored and evaluated by the School Leadership Team, external advisers, Subject leaders and governors. This leads to improvements and innovation. Staff in-service training provides opportunity for self-reflection and positive professional development through collaboration and moderation that ultimately impacts on raising children's outcomes.
Continuous professional development of all staff directly impacts on the teaching and learning of the curriculum.
Assessment is both formative and summative and progress and attainment are regularly tracked across the curriculum. All assessment is used to identify the next steps for pupils and to ensure challenge is identified to continue to raise standards.
Roles and Responsibilities
The Head of School maintains an overview of the curriculum provided by the school and works in partnership with teachers and governors on a range of strategic planning, monitoring and evaluating tasks. Subject Leaders ensure that all the aspects of the National Curriculum content are identified within the curriculum overviews and progression ladders are in place.
Subject Leaders review the Progression ladders termly to ensure that pupils’ learning becomes increasingly more challenging as they move through the year groups, and to maintain an overview of standards within their subject.
Subject Leaders also produce annual action plans for their subjects and a subject specific policy; support the writing of medium-term plans of class teachers, analyse the standards within their subject, provide or signpost staff towards training and resources and engage in developmental work / research projects with external colleagues.
Class Teachers have the final responsibility to produce class specific, medium- and short-term planning for their children. They also have responsibility for the standards their children achieve, the progress they make and the evidence of this learning.
The senior leadership team has the overall responsibility for the quality of provision provided and the outcome in terms of both attainment and progress. Monitoring and evaluating tasks will be undertaken in partnership with the Subject Leader.
These tasks will link into a programme of monitoring, School Development Plan priorities and actions, as well as performance management of teaching staff. The senior leadership team and Subject Leader will report their findings through regular reports, including the termly HT reports, to governors and provide feedback to staff to celebrate strengths and identify aspects for improvements. Subject Leaders will monitor and evaluate the planning and standards achieved by pupils. They will also evaluate the quality of teaching and learning in their subject through observations, learning walks, data analysis, book scrutinises and pupil interviews. They will provide written feedback to governors once a year. The teaching and Learning Governors committee lead by the Curriculum Link Governor will act as critical friends to leadership team and Subject Leaders. Termly meetings will discuss progress made and support the identification of next steps for development. Regular monitoring from the committee fed into ongoing improvement and next steps for whole school development.