Brooke Weston Trust – Primary Curriculum Rationale

Mission

The purpose of Brooke Weston Trust is to transform educational performance in the communities where we work through our long-term commitment to improve student achievement by removing the barriers to learning and providing opportunities for personal development.

Vision

We want to give all our students the best start in life academically and as citizens. Above all, we want them to be highly literate, able to access all the learning necessary to prepare them for a complex, changing, technological and competitive world

We want all our students to be ambitious for themselves and about their futures. We will provide the pathways and support for them to realise their ambitions.

Through a strong culture of positive relationships built on core principles of ‘the Brooke Weston Way’, we will know all our students well and care about them enough to challenge them enough.

We want all our students to be physically and mentally healthy. We want them to develop the confidence and personal values to make good choices and build successful relationships with others from similar and different backgrounds. To do this we must provide them with the breadth of cultural capital to be responsible and tolerant citizens who make a positive contribution to society.

BWT Core Values Across the Primary Curriculum

Improving the life chances of all pupils

• Ambition for All
  Our curriculums will be ambitious and developmental for every child. There will be no excuses in seeking out and creating pathways to personal growth and the best academic success possible for every child.
• High Expectations
  Our curriculums are planned and delivered to the highest standards, quality assured by those with deep subject expertise and have reading as a top priority.
• Excellent Teaching and Support
  Our curriculums will be brought to life by imaginative, engaging and effective teaching building knowledge, skills and character.
• Working Together
  Our curriculums will be fashioned and refreshed through collaboration and use of the best subject expertise.
• Contribute to Society
  All our curriculums will provide opportunities for students to learn about and make meaningful contributions to their local community and global challenges.

Our starting point

The National Curriculum provides pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge and skills that they need to be educated citizens. It introduces pupils to the best that has been thought and said and helps engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement. It provides a core foundation of knowledge around which schools have developed their stimulating bespoke curriculum developing pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding. Each curriculum has been refined with the support of local stakeholders to meet the specific needs and opportunities of each school’s unique context and community.

Our Collective Destination

All BWT Primary Schools are ambitious for their pupils to be successful, confident, engaged and responsible young people with the attributes to succeed and contribute in the wider world.

The tickets For Our Collective Destination

1. Prioritising reading across our curriculum. The engagement with wonderful children’s literature and high-quality texts is at the heart of our curriculum design and all our teaching;
2. Prioritising the development of children’s vocabulary and spoken language, with Tier 2 & Tier 3 vocabulary will be taught explicitly;
3. Prioritising and creating advantage over disadvantage ensuring all children have a ‘cultural capital’ entitlement of ’50 before 11’ which is uniquely devised to embrace the natural world, the arts, citizenship and enterprise;
4. Prioritising the highest quality learning and developmental experiences both in an out of the classroom, ensuring staff and children are challenged, engaged and enthusiastic participants in all learning sequences across all subjects;
5. Prioritising understanding wellbeing in relation to physical and mental health and managing risk effectively to keep themselves safe;

BWT Primary Schools’ Curriculum Offer

Each school will incorporate the Brooke Weston Trust core values within their curriculum offer and articulate explicitly how these will be promoted within their school. Schools will ensure they deliver on our collective curriculum priorities. They will publish core information to meet website compliance standards including details of how the school will implement the curriculum for each subject area and each year group.

Each school will be clear how their curriculum is of high quality with good coverage for every subject which sequentially and cumulatively develops strong pupil knowledge, understanding and skills. Each school must be explicit and clear how progression occurs throughout the academic year and across their different year groups.

Each school will be explicit in stating how their curriculum plan eliminates gaps in learning. Where these occur, or are evident on entry, swift and impactful interventions are actioned to close the gap as a priority.

Each school will provide its staff with relevant and effective CPD to develop and sustain expert subject knowledge and pedagogy driving effective planning, delivery and assessment. Each school will care enough to challenge to address misconceptions, remove barriers to learning and provide appropriate challenge for all pupils.

BWT’s Curriculum Support Offer For, By, And Through Our Primary Schools

BWT is totally committed to helping its primary schools provide a broad, balanced, rich and vibrant curriculum. We want to see curriculums that excite and motivate our children, enabling them to develop confidence in themselves as independent, enthusiastic life-long learners. We believe that children respond best when they enjoy ownership of their learning, when learning experiences are connected, relevant and achieved through practical, purposeful, active learning every day. We understand that ensuring vocabulary, skills, knowledge and understanding is committed to long term memory is fundamental to creating successful learners.

BWT promises to provide support and quality assurance to its schools through a variety of resources including:

• An experienced Primary Executive Principal;
• Subject development groups and Primary Directors of Subject; (Mathematics, English, SEND & Curriculum)
• A dedicated Teaching School offer aligned with the requirements of our schools;
• A Leadership Academy programme for aspiring leaders across our primary schools;
• Identifying and sharing high quality expertise from within BWT across all our schools;
• The very best external partners challenge our practice and thinking including ex HMI, BWT Ed. Stand. Cttee.
• A Primary School Improvement Fund for deployment by the Executive Principal in conjunction with schools;
• Trust-wide moderation and standardisation at all levels, as well as access to external benchmarking (PiXL, etc.)
• Strong governance support across all primary schools;
• Standardised templates for operational and management functions.

BWT Subject Specific Curriculum Priorities 

Reading is prioritised across our curriculum. The engagement with children’s literature and high-quality texts across the full range of subjects is genuinely at the heart of our curriculum design and all our teaching.  We intend every child to leave as an enthusiastic reader with the ability to articulate their learning and access the full curriculum. We place a high focus on developing children’s vocabulary and spoken language.

Enquiry, investigation, fluency, reasoning, using, applying, practical, concrete, abstract & pictorial resources, reasoning, problem solving