Curriculum Rationale
At St. Mary’s Catholic Voluntary Academy we believe that the curriculum is a powerful tool that promotes a love of learning and a willingness to explore.
We enrich the curriculum through our strong Catholic ethos, aiming to share God’s love, helping our community to learn, grow and make a difference.
We maintain that learning should be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for everyone; it should be fun. Despite pupils starting points, abilities and economic backgrounds, our teaching will equip pupils with the skills, knowledge and understanding necessary to be able to make informed choices about the important things in their lives. We believe that by our interactions with pupils we can make a difference to their lives both now and in the future.
We are committed to helping pupils develop a sense of self-respect and self-worth by focusing on the whole child. Through the St Mary’s SPIRIT, we provide opportunities within the curriculum for pupils to be independent learners who strive for success by being resourceful, reflective and team players. Through curriculum, prayer and faith, we will encourage and support our children to live like Jesus, building a desire to make a positive difference to themselves and others.
Through the Gospel values (which include the British values), our pupils’ will have the opportunities to develop their God-given talents in the following areas;
- Religious Development
- Social Development
- Academic Development
- Aesthetic Development
- Physical Development
Thus, supporting all pupils to develop the necessary skills and future capacity to live as independent self-motivating adults, giving him or her the ability to function as a contributing member of both co-operative groups and society.
As a staff, and in partnership with parents, we will continually review and improve the curriculum we offer to our pupils. This will evolve according to pupil’s needs and aspirations. We intend to enrich the curriculum for all pupils using our local history and present context. We will do this by;
- Developing topics around our locality and making links accordingly
- building in ‘wow’ activities (first-hand experiences – trips or visitors into school) to excite, enthuse and engage
- understanding every child’s starting point and having clear pathways and end points, whilst ensuring key learning points are remembered, recalled and applied in future years
- focusing on pupils future aspirations and career development through topics and enterprise projects.
- involving members from our local communities to enhance the pupils knowledge, experience and skills
- sharing key knowledge and information on each topic with parents through our Curriculum Organisers which will include key facts and language, tools to support the pupils learning at home (websites, places to visit in the local area) and enriching activities the pupils will take part in during the school day
