Curriculum

At Claycots, we believe that our curriculum should be at the heart of achieving our school vision:

We believe in excellence and we want the very best future for every child. We want children to leave our school ready to overcome challenges, lead fulfilling lives and make a positive contribute to society.

In order to work towards excellence, we teach all statutory requirements of the National Curriculum. We believe that to ensure the very best future for every child, it is important that our curriculum is broad and balanced and that pupils’ learning in the curriculum as a whole and within individual subjects is coherent and well-sequenced with well planned skills, knowledge and cultural capital.

Whilst working within the National Curriculum framework, we believe it is essential that we make curriculum choices which reflect the needs of the children who attend our school and our wider school community to ensure that all children leave us ready to lead fulfilling lives and make a positive contribution to society. To support this, we have designed a curriculum which aims to also promote the cultural development of pupils through a wide range of engaging theatre visits and museum trips as well as opportunities to contribute to the local community.

Our key aim is that when children leave us at the end of Year 6, they are secondary school ready and equipped with the following:

A high standard of reading, writing and maths knowledge

The skills required to communicate effectively

The ability to independently plan, monitor and evaluate their thinking and learning

Confidence in themselves and the resilience to take on new challenges

Central to delivering our curriculum at Claycots is our school mission:

Learning is at the heart of all that we do and through high expectations and an innovative curriculum, we ensure that all children achieve, build resilience and develop creativity in a safe and stimulating environment.

At Claycots, we focus on learning being carefully sequenced and linked across subjects, ensuring that over time our children both know and remember more. When teaching adults should: recognise children’s prior learning; provide first-hand learning experiences; and ensure lesson content is underpinned by the academic rigour needed to secure depth of learning. Throughout the school, our curriculum is complimented by planned learning opportunities to ensure our children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Each half term, our curriculum is based around a different theme which links across subjects where appropriate to support the deepening of pupils’ knowledge. These themes are broad, encompassing elements of history, geography and science and are always supported by the use of high-quality texts. Within our curriculum planning, we consider opportunities for children to revisit prior learning in different contexts and to build on what they have already learnt so that over time, they both know and remember more.

If you have any further questions about our curriculum at Claycots, please contact your child’s class teacher in the first instance. For further guidance, please contact a member of our Senior Leadership Team via enquiries@claycots.com.

Claycots School follows the National Curriculum – details available here: