Our Curriculum

Bidston Avenue Primary School will engage, inspire, challenge and support every child to achieve their best through the pursuit of a world class curriculum.

Our school will be a place where every child leaves as a reader, a thinker, and has the resilience to be prepared for the responsibilities and experiences of tomorrow's world.

We know that:

•Reading ability is the best predictor of future educational achievement and life success 

•The modern world requires more thinking and problem solving abilities than ever before and those who are equipped with these skills will succeed 

•Children who are resilient flourish in all environments

Catch-Up Curriculum 2020

This has been written prior to DFE advice and is subject to change.

Children in all year groups will have missed out on parts of the curriculum.

The national curriculum is written in different ways depending on the subject. 

Some subjects are written for year groups and others are to be covered in upper or lower keystages (i.e. year 3/4 and year 5/6).  Some subjects have a statement for elements that need to be covered over a key stage. 

Some knowledge, skills and understanding will be important and therefore will need to be taught prior to a new element in a new year group.  Some key elements will be revisited as part of the subject's scheme of work. 

Other national curriculum issues we will encounter could be to do with themes that may be statutory rather than a concept or piece of knowledge.  For example, 'the Roman Empire and its impact on Britain' is a topic that should be studied, so we would need to ensure that this element would be slotted in during the rest of the time at school.

The best way for our teachers to have an understanding of where the children are up to and to create a plan for the class's learning is to have them in school.

Our teachers and subject leaders are currently working on this.  We will share the overarching elements of the catch-up (topics/themes missed) in the termly information for parents, as it may be something you may wish to support at home.

So what is our plan for getting children back to 'normal'?

Social/Emotional Support

Each year, we have a 'getting to know you' time for teachers to build up new relationships with the children.  This year will be no exception, except that within the first two weeks all classes across school will follow a Nurture Programme created by our Personal, Social, Health and Emotional scheme providers.  It focuses on:

• Emotions
• Family
• Network
• Future.

The intention of these early class nurture sessions is to allow children to express themselves fully, to help teachers recognise any areas of concern, and to easily identify necessary support, if required.  We have the backing of Place2Be too and Kat, our school counsellor, will be on hand to support children and staff.

Children are more resilient than you often think.  Around 100 children have returned from lockdown in the last week.  They have settled brilliantly, are happy and are already working hard in phonics, maths, literacy and some wider units foundation subject work.

Physical/Health Support

Our PE team have already been working with children to improve their fitness with a daily time for exercise. Ready for September, the team have rearranged the physical education plans to ensure we can continue to deliver our sessions even if we a restricted by social distancing measures. For example, this could mean a swap around of PE units to ensure that athletics and wall/net games will come before invasion and team games. This is all unit dependent. 

Wider Curriculum Subjects

We expect to be covering most, if not all, of the subjects on our return.  We believe that children should continue to to receive a rounded education...we have heard via the media that their are plans to restrict subjects, but we will do our utmost to keep it broad and balanced. 
 

English and Mathematics
Fortunately, our maths curriculum is very well organised and as children progress they will meet skills over and over again (and within other chapters).  Our maths leader is currently plotting whether the missed skills can be taught within ‘strive for five’ each morning or will need to be taught before the new chapter in the new year. Our maths curriculum exceeds the standards of the national curriculum tests and it will be possible for us to slim down some year groups to focus on the key material and chapters needed to be a good mathematician. 

English planning is very similar to maths. Children will still need to learn key words and spellings set for various year groups. They will need to be taught set grammatical knowledge across the school. Fortunately, the curriculum for spelling, punctuation and grammar programme spans across two years and this makes it easier for us to catch-up as key sections are returned to, which ensures that children have a deeper understanding. 

Catch-Up Tuition Programme

The UK Government has not shared their plan for tuition with school.  We do not now how much we will receive or how much we would need to put towards it.  We have no further information at this time.