Our Curriculum

At Oakwood Primary Academy we have designed a bespoke curriculum for our children underpinned by our values - Democratic, Inclusive, Excelling and Collaborative. We support children to become responsible and motivated learners who embrace challenges and strive for success while supporting their emotional well-being.

Curriculum is a word which describes the formal and informal learning which takes place in school. “In a democratic society which prizes equality of opportunity, the curriculum should be based first and foremost on the knowledge we consider all young people should have the access to and begin to acquire during their school years” (Myatt 2018).

As a school, we are committed to providing a knowledge-rich curriculum to all of our learners where school leaders design a curriculum based upon the National Curriculum entitlement as a minimum, with further taught and un-taught elements that extend and enrich provision. “The curriculum – taught and untaught – represents the totality of the experience of the child within schooling” (Myatt 2018).

As a school, we work collaboratively to design and resource our curriculum, sharing expertise and harnessing talent from within, and beyond the Trust, in order to drive high expectations of curriculum content, resourcing and pedagogy.

Our curriculum aspires to be:

• Evidence-informed
• Sequenced so as to help children build schemas
• Taught to be remembered
• Designed to develop children’s metacognitive knowledge and behaviours
• Broad – allowing for a wide-range of experiences and contexts
• Challenging
• Adaptive – in order to meet the needs of all learners.
• Supported by effective assessment processes and procedures
• Oracy focused to ensure pupils have access to a wide-ranging vocabulary
• Supported by evidence-informed professional development
• Our un-taught curriculum reflects our Trust values in:

Developing our children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) knowledge and understanding, supporting children’s social awareness and ensuring that they know how to make a positive contribution to society.

• Supporting children’s mental and physical health.
• Putting children’s emotional development at the heart of our work through our Trauma Informed Schools (TIS) approach.
• Opportunities for creative and sporting pursuits enhance our taught curriculum to develop individual talent.
• Ensuring that there are equal opportunities for all pupils 

High quality teaching and rigorous assessment enables all children to access the breadth of the curriculum. The curriculum is inspiring, challenging, deep and broad. So that all children:

• Develop and remember transformational knowledge and skills that take them beyond their experience.
• Strengthen their academic knowledge and cultural capital through the acquisition of a broad and rich vocabulary.
• Shape their knowledge and character to prepare them for their future adult life, so that they can make a positive impact upon society.
• Achieve outcomes that show progress, whatever their starting points.