The National Curriculum

The National Curriculum specifies five Key Stages in relationship to the period of

compulsory education (from 5 years to 16 years of age).

These are: Foundation Stage (3-5 years) Key Stage 1 (5-7 years) Key Stage 2 (7-11years)

Key Stage 3 (11-14years) Key Stage 4 (14-16years)

Key Stages 1 and 2

The Core Subjects are: English, Mathematics, Information and

Communication Technology, Science and RE (Voluntary Aided School).

The Foundation Subjects are: Art, Design & Technology, Foreign Language, Geography, History, Music, P.H.S.E./ Relationships, and Physical Education.

There are arrangements for formally assessing the pupils’ performance according to

the levels of attainment and against the appropriate level descriptions at the end of

each Key Stage. In addition to the formal assessment, teachers are constantly

assessing the understanding and progress of the children.

These subjects, together with Religious Education, make up the curriculum

provided by our school. In addition, cross curricular themes, dimensions and skills are

identified. These include global citizenship, health education, environmental education,

British Values, Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural awareness which includes economic and industrial awareness and multicultural education. Relationship and Personal, Social and Health education alongside equality of opportunity and our Christian Virtues are at the heart of our school’s curriculum.

It is intended that the National Curriculum should not be the whole curriculum offered by the school, although it will be the majority of it, and that the entire curriculum provided should be broad and balanced in nature.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities :

Mellor St Mary CE  Primary School prides itself in being very inclusive and will endeavour to support every child regardless of their level of need.  All pupils follow the National Curriculum at a level and a pace that is appropriate to their abilities. At times, when it is felt appropriate, modifications to the curriculum will be implemented in line with The Children’s and Families Act 2014 and the Equality Act 2010.

To successfully match pupils’ ability to the curriculum there are some actions we take to achieve this:

• Ensure that all pupils have access to the school curriculum and all school activities.
• Help all pupils achieve to the best of their abilities, despite any difficulty or disability they may have.
• Ensure that teaching staff are aware of and sensitive to the needs of all pupils, teaching pupils in a way that is appropriate to their needs.
• Strive to develop confidence and improve learners’ self-esteem.
• Work in partnership with parents/ carers, pupils and relevant external agencies in order to provide for children’s special educational needs and disabilities.
• Identify at the earliest opportunity, all children that need special consideration to support their needs (whether these are educational, social, physical or emotional)
• Make suitable provision for children with SEND to fully develop their abilities, interests and aptitudes and gain maximum access to the curriculum.
• Ensure that all children with SEND are fully included in all activities of the school in order to promote the highest levels of achievement.
• Promote self-worth and enthusiasm by encouraging independence at all age and ability levels.
• Give every child the entitlement to a sense of achievement.
• Regularly review our policy and practice in order to achieve best practice.

At Mellor St Mary CE  Primary School we believe in participation and progress for all. We aim to create an inclusive culture in our school and value high quality teaching for all learners.

We understand that children learn and develop in different ways. Teachers and teaching assistants recognise this and use different teaching styles, resources and adapt work in the classroom to cater for the various ways children learn. The majority of children in our school will receive support through good quality teaching in the classroom (High Quality Teaching).

However we are mindful that some children, at some time in their school life, may need extra help and support in a variety of different ways. If staff feel that a child’s needs cannot be met through quality first teaching alone, then additional support or intervention may be put into place to compliment the curriculum and enhance access. This is monitored regularly and adjusted as necessary.

Each learner identified as having SEN is entitled to support that is ‘additional to or different from’ a normal differentiated curriculum. The type of support is dependent on the individual learning needs and is intended to enable access to learning and overcome the barrier to learning identified.

The waves of intervention model describes how different levels of intervention can be used to facilitate learning.

 Wave 1 High Quality Teaching

This is about what should be on offer for all children: the effective inclusion of all pupils in high-quality everyday personalised teaching. This could include:

• Differentiated and challenging tasks to meet pupils’ needs
• High expectations which inspire, motivate and challenge pupils
• Good subject and curriculum knowledge
• Well-structured lessons
• Adapting teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils through metacognitive strategies.
• Behaviour managed effectively to ensure a positive and safe learning environment which promotes progress
• Deploying support staff effectively.

Wave 2 Interventions: 

Where children need additional support they may be given some Wave 2 intervention to help them ‘Keep up and Catch Up’ with their peers to prevent a gap from appearing or increasing. Wave 2 interventions are often targeted at a group of pupils with similar needs within the classroom environment. These are monitored for each class using the class provision map as well as individually for children with SEND using the Pupil Overview of Provision (POP) each term.

Wave 2 interventions may include:

• Adapted teaching techniques
• Handwriting / fine motor skills support
• Phonics keep and catch up sessions
• Social skills or nurture groups (ELSA)
• Motor skills activities
• Speech & Language sessions linked to NELI or specific SALT programmes shared with school
• Maths support eg pre-learning activities promoting vocabulary or strategies to apply independently in lessons.
• Reading support - additional reading sessions with volunteers and staff members.
• Targeted spelling words, rules, streams using key words from the national curriculum.
• School Led Tutor (SLT) support for basic skills linked to reading, writing and mathematics.

Wave 3 interventions:

If a pupil continues to make inadequate progress, despite high-quality teaching targeted at their areas of weakness, the class teacher, with support from the SENCO , will assess whether a pupil has a significant learning difficulty, which may require highly- tailored support. This may include specialist or individualised provision.

Our school aims to meet the individual educational needs of all pupils but it seeks to

balance the needs of individuals with the needs of the other children in the school. The

school also recognises that the presence of pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities can provide an opportunity for the children to develop positive attitudes towards those whose needs are different.

The Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator, in school is  Mrs Embley-Peers.

Homework (please also refer to Remote Learning Policy):

The greatest help parents can give to a child is to take an active interest in their school work, often by helping with a piece of research which interests them, or by listening to their

child/children read each evening and discussing the story with them.

We believe that children should be encouraged to have wide interests at this stage of their

development e.g. being members of uniformed groups, sporting or drama clubs can be of great

benefit to them, as is enjoying evenings at home with the family. Therefore all pupils are given

homework which is intended to enrich and broaden their education and to reinforce

learning covered in school time.

Electronic programmes are also used to support reading, spelling, grammar, phonics and mental arithmetic knowledge and skills. 

Children are given written or electronic homework on a regular basis. All children from EYFS

onwards are given reading books and library books to help them develop a love of reading for life.