Our Curriculum

English

Maths

Science

Sport

BLP

THRIVE


The Wilcombe Curriculum

Key statutory curriculum requirements for academies:

Academies are required to have a broad and balanced curriculum which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

For pupils in the Foundation Stage, academies are required to follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).

While academies are not required to follow the National Curriculum they are required to ensure their curriculum:

  • includes English, maths and science;
  • includes Religious Education, although the nature of this will depend on whether the school has a faith designation;
  • includes sex and relationship education

We teach through topics and work with the children to take account of their interests, making links between subjects, developing knowledge, skills and positive attitudes to learning in a range of contexts.  We provide a wide range of stimulating day trips and residential visits to enhance the children’s learning.

Learning is not just about subjects and knowledge, but also about developing a child’s personal and social qualities: consideration for others, empathy, compassion, resilience, honesty, respect, etc.  These qualities are encouraged and modelled by staff, volunteers and visitors throughout the school day and beyond.

Our curriculum is underpinned by the Essentials Curriculum by Chris Quigley. The Essentials Curriculum sets out the essential coverage, learning objectives and standards which are required for all subjects. Furthermore, it provides progress measures for all subjects including personal development.

The reason we chose this curriculum is because it emphasises the importance of developing the depth of children’s learning. In essence, this means providing children with increased cognitive challenge, allowing them to apply the skills which they have learnt independently in a range of contexts rather than moving them onto the next skill needlessly when they have not truly mastered it.

We feel this curriculum provides us with a coherent, progressive and appropriately sequenced curricular structure to enable our pupils to develop subject specific knowledge and skills to prepare them well for the next stages of their education. The curriculum, builds progressively on from the learning in the Foundation Stage. The milestones (1, 2 and 3) that are built into our curriculum complements our mixed age class structure. The curriculum is aligned to the National Curriculum and goes beyond National Curriculum requirements in each milestone to ensure repetition of skills and knowledge.

Here at Wilcombe we also underpin everything we do using ‘Building Learning Powers’ by Guy Claxon. It is about creating a culture in classrooms – and in the school more widely – that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable young people to become better learners; face difficulty and uncertainty calmly, confidently and creatively. It engages students consciously with the ideas and processes of their own learning in the knowledge that learning itself is learnable. 

If you have any further questions or queries regarding our curriculum please feel free to contact us wilcombe@ventrus.org.uk or call 01884 253025