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.

Rationale

The Brooke Weston Trust Primary curriculum was developed by the Curriculum Leads of each school and is shared across the Primaries. There is great strength in a common curriculum: shared expertise and planning, joint professional development, a standardised assessment framework and joint opportunities for our children. Through a shared vision we work together to deliver a curriculum which transforms lives.

The National Curriculum is a demanding curriculum which offers essential knowledge and skills that children 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 we have developed a broad curriculum to meet the needs of our children. Our curriculum is designed to powerfully address disadvantage.

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.

Successful individuals with a love of learning who

• Have essential skills of reading, read for pleasure and become lifelong readers;
• Communicate effectively in a variety of ways with a rich vocabulary;
• Are motivated and determined to reach their full potential, now and in the future;
• Are open to new thinking and ideas;
• Able to learn independently and collaboratively, as part of a team;
• Have enquiring minds and think for themselves to process information, reason, question and evaluate;
• Are creative, innovative and resourceful, able to identify and solve problems in ways that draw upon a range of learning areas;
• Know about big ideas and events that shape our world.
• Appreciate the beauty, awe and wonder of the world.

Confident individuals with the skills to contribute and thrive in an ever-changing world, who

• Have a sense of self-worth, self-awareness and personal identity that enables them to manage their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing;
• Relate well to others and maintain good relationships;
• Become increasingly independent and able to take the initiative;
• Make healthy lifestyle choices;
• Take managed risks and stay safe;
• Are willing to try new things and make the most of opportunities;
• Have a sense of optimism about their lives and the future;
• Develop personal values and attributes such as honesty, empathy and respect for others.

Engaged individuals with persistence, resilience, creativity and enthusiasm, who

• Have a determination to learn and overcome obstacles;
• Embrace challenge and the learning opportunities offered them;
• Aspire to be the best they can be;
• Mutually respect and trust themselves and others;
• Collaboratively pursue excellence;
• Actively involve and immerse themselves in school and community life;
• Celebrate uniqueness and being part of one school and Trust family;
• Are intrinsically motivated to be the best they can be.

Responsible individuals making a positive contribution to society, who

• Are prepared for their role as a family member, in their community and life in modern Britain;
• Have secure values and beliefs and have principles to distinguish right from wrong;
• Understand their own and others’ cultures and traditions within British Heritage, and have a strong sense of their own place in the world;
• Co-operate with others;
• Respect others and act with integrity;
• Appreciate diversity;
• Sustain and improve the environment, locally and globally.

The Tickets For Our Collective Destination

Our curriculum eliminates disadvantage by:

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. Ensuring all children have a ‘cultural capital’ entitlement of ’50 before Y7’ which is uniquely devised to embrace the natural world, the arts, citizenship and enterprise;
4. Providing 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.  Understanding wellbeing in relation to physical and mental health and managing risk effectively to keep themselves safe.

BWT Primary Schools’ Curriculum Offer

Our curriculum is of high quality with good coverage for every subject which sequentially and cumulatively develops strong pupil knowledge, understanding and skills. The curriculum is explicit and clear how progression occurs in each subject throughout the academic year and across year groups. It is clear what end points the curriculum is building towards and what pupils need to know and be able to do to reach those end points.

Each school will be explicit in planning how the implementation of the Brooke Weston curriculum 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.

The Trust 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 its primary schools provide a broad, balanced, rich and vibrant curriculum. We want to see the  curriculum implemented so that it excites 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.