Curriculum Excellence

We provide a curriculum that enables children to gain curiosity, ambition and a willingness to practise so that they gain the knowledge, skills and understanding to help them be socially active citizens.  It emphasises the central importance of proficient reading, writing and maths skills as the basis of a good education and future personal and social contribution to society.

All schools currently use the Cornerstones Education Engage, Develop, Innovate, Express process, although this is not mandatory.  This gives a framework for teaching knowledge and skills-rich subjects deeply in a topic approach.

We have aligned approaches across the Trust for the teaching of reading, writing and maths to equip children with a strong command of the basics and the confidence, ambition and teamwork skills to succeed.

We are committed to ensuring all of the talents and skills children have are developed to the full.

We will deliver high quality social, moral, spiritual and cultural education (SMSC) that enables our children to know themselves, relate to others from a range of backgrounds and cultures, keep themselves healthy and safe and contribute as fully as they can to wider society.

We are committed to a bucket list of experiences that each child will experience during their time in a school in the Trust.

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum.  Schools in the Stour Federation follow a key text approach for their topic work, PSHE social and emotional learning, our No Outsiders lessons on equality and for developing a love of books and pleasure.  These core texts underpin the learning across the curriculum, often developing both the substantive and disciplinary knowledge within a global theme.

The United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals are a set of goals and targets aimed at making the world a better place.  We are embedding a more global ethos into our curriculum to deepen children’s understanding of these local and global issues so they acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.

Teachers also look to instil and develop in our children six global competencies that describe the skills and attributes needed for learners to flourish as citizens of the world: character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking. Relationships are the active ingredient in so much of the realisation of the 6Cs and learning in our curriculum.