Curriculum Aims and Values

Our Curriculum Aims and Values

Only My Best is Good Enough: Aspiring and Flourishing Together

At Blackpool CE Primary School we encourage our pupils to be active learners.  From the start of their educational life, pupils at Blackpool are praised and encouraged to ask questions; being inquisitive learners and taking responsibility for their own learning. Making mistakes and persevering with challenges are seen as an important part of learning, without which, new learning cannot take place. 

Blackpool is a learning community where teachers and pupils never stop learning.  Every moment during the school day, is seen as an opportunity for learning. 

Children will enjoy an exciting, varied and knowledge-based, broad curriculum with a range of opportunities, including trips, visitors, residentials and learning through play, to facilitate and enhance the development of knowledge, skills and understanding. We ensure our children are involved in a range of enrichment experiences over their school lives to further develop their personal development and cultural capital.  

In order for our children to achieve our school vision and aims, we have created a set of Curriculum Threads, which overarch all areas of school life, and are considered in our planning for teaching and learning. Our Curriculum Threads are: Communication and Connections, Life Long Skills, My Place in the World, Values, Creativity and Well Being. Our Threads are important in providing opportunities for our pupils to develop skills for life and they are intertwined into all planning for learning, including Spiritual, Moral, Social, Cultural and Personal Development. 

The content of our evidence-informed curriculum is carefully designed to ensure the progression of skills, knowledge and vocabulary from EYFS to Year 6. Our two-year rolling programme of study has been organised broadly into themes, that are based on the subject programmes of study in the National Curriculum and have been purposefully mapped out with curricular goals for each Key Stage to ensure our children’s learning journeys are built on appropriately as they progress through the school. 

In order to make the curriculum relevant and meaningful to our children, and for enabling context-appropriate opportunities, sequences of work are planned with consideration of cross-curricular teaching as well as a key focus on skills and knowledge acquisition in individual subjects. This also enables our pupils to draw on previous learning and successfully make meaningful connections with other areas of learning. We aim to use our locality and make links with our local community with many areas of learning, whilst also ensuring our pupils understand their place in the wider world. 

Learning can incorporate an overarching Big Question, within which our pupils are posed further questions for investigation. The skills and knowledge acquired in learning sequences, as well as elements of our Curriculum Threads, are drawn together with opportunities to celebrate or demonstrate key learning. 

Our curriculum is regularly reviewed and is developing in line with current thinking about how children learn. Findings from cognitive science are influencing our curriculum design and our practice in the classroom in order that our children know and remember more over time. 

Communication and language are central to our curriculum planning. Oracy skills and the acquisition of rich, varied and technical vocabulary are central to all learning and are developed across the school to enable our children to gain a high level of communication and interaction skills.  

Keeping healthy mentally and physically are key parts of our curriculum and a wide range of sports is taught every week for all age groups. There are additional opportunities to participate in sports through the numerous and successful extra-curricular sporting clubs that are offered. All children in the school will participate in competitive sports during each Key Stage. 

All pupils are involved in a school play, assembly or production in every school year and our performing arts and music are key in promoting confidence and making links with our community.  

Our curriculum incorporates our outdoor environment, which includes a school garden, and a woodland area for outdoor learning opportunities including Forest School activities. There is also an outdoor area for Early Years provision in the foundation stage. 

At Blackpool, we believe there are no limits to what our pupils can achieve. Therefore, although lessons are planned with differentiation in order to challenge all starting points, pupils are not constricted by assigning them to a particular ability group. All of our pupils have access to the right support to enable them to flourish.   

Subjects are assessed in different ways with a focus on providing children with feedback for the next steps as well as celebrating achievements. Subject Leaders monitor their subjects to ensure that teaching and learning in each area is of the highest quality. Please see individual subject intents and overviews for further detail about subject planning, teaching and assessment.