Curriculum

Our Curriculum Intent

In our Christian family we all SHINE in the light of Jesus. Strong Christian ethos, built upon Christian values. Happy memories made in a fun, loving and caring place. Inspirational teaching and learning, with high expectations for all. Nurturing environment, safe and secure, where all are valued and success is celebrated. Everyone working as a team in a school where we are all proud to belong. Our vision Statement was written collaboratively by our school community and underpins all we aim to achieve in our village, church school. The key word is ‘shine’. What does it mean to shine? To excel in something, to demonstrate great ability, to perform well? Shining is something that the ethos and curriculum at Euxton CE Primary allows us all to do. Jesus is the light of our world and shines brightly for us, and we should all have the opportunities to do the same. ‘Family’ was also such an important word to include in our Mission Statement, as at our school community truly is a family. That doesn’t just happen. Relationships need hard work, and our warm and friendly yet firm approach is integral to our vision. First, and foremost, we want our children to be happy. They have to be in order to flourish, to learn and to develop. By getting to know our children, and their families, well, and by discovering their strengths, interests, and fears equips us with the mutual trust that is needed to succeed.

At Euxton CE Primary we work hard to remember what Jesus taught us so that we can learn, play, work and live together. We want everyone to feel happy, confident and safe. We want learning to be fun and exciting and we want our teaching to inspire and encourage children and adults so that they love their time at our school. We believe that everyone should get the help they need so that they can learn, grow and achieve as much as they possibly can. We expect everyone to do their very best, to celebrate their own and others achievements and to let their light shine to make our world a better place. Every child is recognised as a unique individual. We welcome and celebrate differences. The ability to learn is underpinned by the teaching of skills, knowledge, concepts and values with a vision to prepare our children for life beyond our school. We believe that childhood should be a happy, investigative and enquiring time, where there are no limits to curiosity and there is a thirst for new experience and knowledge and a genuine love of learning.

In our quest for our children to shine, we ensure that our curriculum is broad and balanced, so as not to streamline or hothouse learning, but to provide the children with as many different opportunities to excel. Children can’t discover their strengths if their education is limited. Our focus on curriculum development is therefore always carefully designed to ensure coverage and progression. It provides children with memorable experiences alongside diverse and rich opportunities from which children can learn and develop a range of transferrable skills, also benefitting from repetition and practice to consolidate. Subject leaders play an integral role in the success of our curriculum through a regular programme of monitoring, evaluation and review. Our staff are learners too and the supportive, nonthreatening ethos evident enables us all to develop together. The celebration of good practice contributes to the ongoing commitment to evolve and improve further.

Our school takes pride in providing a highly inclusive environment, commented on positively by our Local Authority, where learners demonstrate high levels of enjoyment in their education. Children of all abilities are helped to achieve their potential. We do not rely on published schemes of intervention, instead using more targeted, instant support to consolidate or challenge. Enjoyment and accessibility of the curriculum prompts achievement, confidence and good behaviour. Children feel safe to try new things. We have transformed our outdoors environment over recent years and this, alongside our local community, is considered a great opportunity for active learning for all of our children. The enriched different areas ensure that all learners have access to high quality educational experiences beyond the classroom walls, and these are integrated into the curriculum throughout the year.

Our Christian values are at the heart of all that we do. Our children understand that support for themselves and for each other are the key to success; that we are a team and therefore we look after each other, whether that be within our school community or in a much wider context as a global citizen. Our children are constantly thinking of those in need and creating ways to support them. Having a positive attitude is essential and we teach the children about resilience, success and challenges. We understand that children will not be successful learners unless they are emotionally secure. Wellbeing for all of our school community is of the utmost importance and direct coverage of this through our PSHCE curriculum, Heartsmart, Five Ways to Wellbeing and Growth Mindset promotes this. In addition, we have adopted a more flexible approach to many of these areas, timetabling cross-phase days and sessions, where children from Reception to Year 6 work together, which the children and staff thoroughly enjoy. There is a high focus on developing the children’s moral, spiritual, social and cultural understanding through the Christian message of love, joy and the celebration of humanity. Our lack of diversity means in many of these aspects we have to work harder on this, so a carefully planned programme promoting British values and learning from and about other faiths is a strong feature of our school.

Sport and physical fitness have a high profile at Euxton CE Primary and our children are introduced to a wide variety of activities to promote physical health and wellbeing. The Daily Mile for all of our children provides them with a set time not just for promoting physical stamina, but also supporting them mentally too. A range of enrichment clubs give our children access to additional activities, including less well-known, as well as traditional sports. We ensure that all of our children are given the opportunity to compete in sport, either against themselves, their peers or externally with children from other schools. We are proud to hold the Activemark Gold Award for School Sport.

We have a strong tradition for music and performance in our school. We have a specialist music teacher, which results in all of our KS2 children learning a brass or woodwind instrument each week for each of their four junior years. As well as teaching the children a skill and about perseverance, the children learn how to work collaboratively, performing each year for their families and the school community. Our Infant children in EYFS and KS1 have the delights of a ‘Wonderful Wednesday’ afternoon each week, led by our talented team of support staff. They share their skills with the children, in a relaxed, family-feel environment, learning how to bake, sew, make things and play games, etc. They often have a finished product to take home to share and talk about with their families, promoting discussion. We are fortunate to have many of our support staff sharing their expertise throughout our school, and our children benefit greatly from learning French from a fluent speaker in a fun way and also being taught art skills in smaller groups as a result.

The big wide world can be a scary place and we put a high emphasis on how to keep safe. Our curriculum has been designed to teach children, in an age-appropriate way, about life in an everincreasing technology based/social media environment. We educate about and address online safety issues regularly, and have created links with different organisations to support this. Having such positive relationships between adults and children in our school means that all of our children have someone they feel they can talk to should the need arise. This is so important to us. We embrace opportunities to further develop our children’s understanding of safety outside of school, and road safety, being able to swim and keep safe in water, and Bikeability programmes are embedded. .In addition to online safety, our computing curriculum explores current technology and through professional development our staff are kept up to date with new initiatives. We also have a very popular and successful Computing Club after school, offering our children coding and web-design, amongst other activities.

Our relationships with our families is a real strength of our school, with many planned opportunities to meet, discuss, share and celebrate. We also feel it is essential to be flexible and truly do operate an open-door approach. Our families trust us and we work hand-in-hand in partnership, and although life does throw obstacles in our paths to test us, by having a mutually respectful relationship we work hard together to come through the other side. This is not merely linked to the education of our children, but personal circumstances too. Our families and community also support our curriculum, and we welcome them into our school as volunteers, to facilitate learning skills and to share experiences. Children leave Euxton CE Primary with a sense of belonging. They feel they belong to a community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become life-long learners. Our children shine.

Mairi Ash

Headteacher