Clough Head J & I School

Federation Curriculum Statement

Our Mission Statement

Three schools, one heart, working together to achieve new heights.

Our Federation Values

Our federation values underpin and drive our curriculum forward.  On a weekly basis throughout our curriculum and within our own classrooms; we work on, celebrate and promote one of our federation values. Then throughout our curriculum content we appreciate this value in a larger scale each half term. This can be seen upon our three-year curriculum cycle. (Please see below).

Trust 

Open-minded

Growth

Enjoyment

Tolerance 

Honesty 

Enthusiasm 

Resilience 

Curriculum Statement of Intent

At the Heights Federation, our curriculum is designed with the intent of ensuring that all pupils acquire the essential knowledge and skills at each stage of their education and prepare them for wider life. The ability to learn is underpinned by the teaching of basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values. We have thought carefully about what we teach when, how we can ensure learning is layered in practice and stored in long term memory; ensuring the knowledge that we wish children to know, builds on previous knowledge and progresses over units of work, so that children can create their own opinions based on factual knowledge and think deeply about how these concepts interrelate and how they may be relevant to a pupil’s everyday life. We constantly seek to provide enhancement opportunities to engage learning and believe that childhood should be a happy, investigative and enquiring time in our lives where there are no limits to curiosity and where there is a thirst for new experiences and knowledge.

Every one of our three schools is treated as an individual school and as part of this every child is recognised as a unique individual. We celebrate and welcome differences within our school community and with each school’s individual context. Community involvement is an essential part of our curriculum as we celebrate the heritage and location of our schools. Through this we enable the children to take an active role and pride in the communities that we serve. Children leave our school with a sense of pride and belonging to the Colne Valley community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become lifelong learners. Our children know how to make a positive contribution to their community and the wider society.

We believe wholeheartedly in supporting the development of the whole child, placing emphasis not only on academic success but also on each child’s personal, social and emotional development. Keeping our children safe and supporting our children’s mental health and well-being is at the heart of everything we do.

Our Curriculum Journey

Since 2019, when we began writing our new curriculum, our curriculum has been constantly developing - it is never static. The more we teach our curriculum, the more we understand it and this leads to adaptations and changes that build stronger connections. Ensuring that children are successful academically is a crucial part of our children’s education but of paramount importance is that they also learn how to live successful and happy lives where they are informed, courageous advocates of the things that matter to them. We have worked hard on embedding and extending our opportunities for activities that promote the personal development of our pupils. These opportunities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and help a person engage in society, enhance the quality of life and contribute to the realisation of dreams and aspirations. We are continually striving to ensure that our curriculum is as rich in teaching and instilling values as it is in knowledge. The passion, skills and experience of our staff team allows our curriculum to continuously progress for our pupils.  

Our aims

Trust – to help our pupils to trust in and to follow their own moral or ethical convictions and do the right thing by themselves and by others within their community.

Open-minded – to help our pupils to develop the quality of being willing to consider ideas and opinions that are now new or different to their own. To encourage our children to be open to new challenges and ways of working.

Growth – to help children develop a growth mind-set and a love of challenge and create an environment where children embrace risk. To help children to grow as individuals by providing them with the knowledge that they need about our diverse society and to want to know more about others lives. This ensures children are ready for the next stage of their education.                                                                                                                                                                    

Enjoyment – to help our pupils to become independent, enquiring and collaborative learners, who have a thirst for knowledge and learning. To develop happy, motivated life-long learners equipped for the future.

Tolerance - to provide challenge, enabling children to reach their full potential. Ensure that the curriculum is individualised and sits within the child’s zone of proximal development. Be inclusive and diverse allowing a range of opportunities for children to find their element. To help pupils have an open and accepting mind, showing respect, empathy and compassion for all.

Honesty – To nurture healthy, caring and respectful individuals and relationships and to teach our children that honest people are sincere, trustworthy and loyal. To allow the children the honesty to take their learning into their own hands and identify when learning is challenging or equally not challenging enough.

Enthusiasm - to create enthusiastic, inquisitive, reflective individuals, with values, who make a positive contribution to the world.

Resilience - to enable the children to emerge from challenging experiences with a positive sense of themselves and their futures. Children who develop resilience are better able to face disappointment, learn from failure, cope with loss, and adapt to change.

What runs throughout all of our aims is to provide a curriculum which is memorable and experiential, rich in vocabulary that supports understanding.

Public Sector Equality Duty

The Equality Act of 2010 requires us to publish information that demonstrates that we have due regard for the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010. As a school we pride ourselves in being able to:

Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it. 

Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it. 

Consult with a wide variety of stakeholders regarding the decisions that we make to promote equality and eliminate discrimination; including families, pupils, staff and members of the local community.

We understand the principle of the Act and the work needed to ensure taht those with protected characteristics are not discriminated against and are given equality of opportunity. We also actively promote character education across our curriculum and in every aspect of school life. 

A protected characteristic under the act covers the groups listed below: 

• age 
• disability
• race
• gender
• gender reassignment
• maternity and pregnancy
• religion and belief
• sexual orientation
• Marriage and Civil Partnership 

The Heights Federation is an inclusive group of schools where we focus on the well-being and progress of every child and where all members of our community are of equal worth.  The children and all key stakeholders are at the heart of everything we do.  The protected characteristics are weaved through our PSHE curriculum and the day-to-day routines also link to our work on British Values. 

We believe that the Equality Act provides a framework to support our commitment to valuing diversity, tackling discrimination, promoting equality and fostering good relationships between people. It also ensures that we continue to tackle issues of disadvantage and underachievement of different groups.

The Current Implementation of Our Curriculum

The implementation of our curriculum is outlined within our school development plan and is a live document that is consistently and regularly adapting in accordance to our ever-changing curriculum priorities. Currently we are working on these areas;

• Reviewing our curriculum cycle and using the gaps that we can identify in our children’s cultural capital as opportunities to enhance our curriculum and to be driven by our federation values. 
• Reviewing our knowledge skills and opportunity ladders at depth, by ensuring it is knowledge rich. That it is progressive and has clear end points for our mixed age classes.
• Creating mental models that allow learners to critical think and transfer their knowledge to other subjects.
• Protecting long term memory by providing memory retention activities as part of our daily curriculum lessons.
• Developing our assessment techniques within our curriculum to identify children’s starting points and to tailor lessons and planning which builds on each child’s prior knowledge and celebrates their individual successes and talents in the foundation subjects. 
• Identifying and intervening promptly where children have identifiable gaps in their knowledge so that all pupils make progress from their baseline and their starting points.
• Ensuring that first quality teaching is at the heart of our classroom practice and that all of our learners have teaching and learning adapted to suit their needs and in order for them to be working within their zone of proximal development whilst providing ambitious challenge.

The Impact of Our Curriculum

Impact Measuring the impact of curriculum is of upmost importance to us as a Federation. Through assessment and tracking we can monitor pupils to ensure they will have a greater depth of understanding. We will track carefully to ensure pupils are on track to reach their expectations. We are working hard to expand our evidence base of achievement, we want to show the children’s knowledge in subject specific areas and not as a reflection of their literacy or numeracy skill. We appreciate all children have skills and talents that lie in all areas of our curriculum. We also believe that pupil voice is a very useful tool for assessment, it is rewarding to hear them enjoying their learning but most important is the drive it gives us as a measure of progress – when they are showing what they have learned and retained. By asking pupils questions such as what they enjoyed and what they learnt, we are able to view the impact of their learning experiences. When reviewing our curriculum, we take in the views of the children and the positive responses and engagement that they have shown to us throughout our teaching of a particular topic. EYFS and end of Key Stage data is available to view on the results page of our website