The 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:
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 (Quality First 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 Quality First 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:
Wave 2 Interventions
Where children need additional support they may be given some Wave 2 intervention to help them ‘Catch Up’ with their peers or prevent a gap from appearing or increasing. Wave 2 interventions are often targeted at a group of pupils with similar needs. 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:
Wave 3 interventions
If pupils continue to make inadequate progress, despite high-quality teaching targeted at their areas of weakness, the class teacher, with support from the SENCO , should assess whether a pupil has a significant learning difficulty, which may require highly- tailored interventions. 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 area 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.