At St Sebastian’s, we understand that for our children to succeed and derive the maximum benefit from school, we offer a broad and balanced, engaging, exciting and interesting curriculum. Promoting ambition and aspiration is a priority - we challenge our children and take pride in doing so.

Our faith and Gospel values of love and forgiveness are at the heart of our ethos – our Catholic school is a community of faith, working in partnership with home and parish. Our commitment to inclusion ensures that every student, regardless of their background or abilities, feel valued and supported in their educational journey.

As a Trauma & Attachment informed school, we recognise that pupils learn best when they feel happy, safe, secure and regulated. By creating a supportive and understanding environment, St Sebastian’s helps pupils overcome challenges associated with adverse experiences to thrive academically and emotionally.

Our curriculum is built around a pedagogy that fosters deep learning, critical thinking, and student engagement. We care for and educate the whole child, developing well-rounded and resilient school citizens, healthy in mind, body and spirit who aspire to be the very best and achieve the very best possible.

Leaders adopt and construct a curriculum that is ambitious and designed to give all pupils, including disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.

Central to our curriculum is a strong focus on reading, recognising it as a key skill that underpins academic achievement across all subjects. By prioritising reading, our school aims to develop proficient readers who can comprehend, analyse, and engage with a wide range of texts effectively. This approach not only enhances literacy skills but also equips students with the tools necessary for successful learning in all areas of the curriculum.

At St. Sebastian’s Catholic Primary School, careful analysis and discussion about our pupils’ experiences, backgrounds, life experiences and cultures have and continue to inform our curriculum design. By having an awareness of potential barriers to learning and progress, we form the necessary key foundations in order to successfully meet the challenges of the next stage of their education and their lives. In order to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain and the challenges of the future, our curriculum is relevant to our pupils' lives, linking learning to real-world contexts and experiences.

St Sebastian’s has always maintained the vital importance of retaining the highest possible quality of education. The leadership team and the teaching staff continue to work tirelessly and creatively in order to plan and deliver a broad curriculum with memorable learning opportunities for all. We recognise the importance of the fundamental skills of phonics, reading, writing and mathematics in particular. As a school, we have always believed, and continue to believe, that the richness, relevance and accessibility of the curriculum are key to driving standards, ensuring the enjoyment of learning and guaranteeing the engagement of all.

Our progression-based curriculum is at the centre of our HEARTS:

• HOLISTIC - Our extended, enhanced curriculum, for the “whole child” builds our pupils’ cultural capital and supports them greatly in accessing a truly broad and balanced curriculum. As a Centre of excellence for Inclusion, our pupils are equipped to embrace every opportunity presented to them.
• EXPERIENCES for Everyone - We provide extensive enrichment and experiences to broaden the education of our pupils. In doing this, pupils are supported in valuing their roles and responsibilities as Catholic citizens and towards sustaining their local and global environment.
• ASPIRATIONAL - Our pupils must believe that anything is possible. They experience and embrace levels of challenge and risk taking, applying this to all elements of our enhanced curriculum offer and beyond.
• READING & Vocabulary - We offer a reading rich, vocabulary rich curriculum. We believe reading is a passport to the world and strongly feel that cultivating a reading for pleasure culture in our school is imperative. Reading for pleasure is the single most important thing that will make a child successful in life. (UNESCO)
• TRAUMA & Attachment informed – A school where we all feel safe, we build positive relationships, individual needs are understood to support the development of self-regulation skills, allowing us to live our school motto, “Only My Best Will Do”.
• SKILLS, Knowledge & Understanding - We provide a knowledge- based curriculum, ambitious in its content, designed and taught using strategies to enable children to embed their learning in their long-term memories. Our children know more and remember more through quality-first, adaptive teaching reinforced through daily basic skills.

We actively seek external expertise enabling staff to access high quality and relevant training opportunities with a view to drive their knowledge and the curriculum forward. Consultants, curriculum wide, have been engaged within the school to develop our personalised curriculum, maximising opportunities for learning.

Teaching consistently deepens and improves pupil’s knowledge, skills and understanding and focuses on the core skills which our pupils need to thrive. The appropriately targeted support, combined with effective quality first teaching and adaptive teaching strategies that match our pupils’ individual needs means that all pupils’ have quality learning experiences, adapted to their needs. Consequently, they make good to outstanding progress. In EYFS, KS1 and KS2, teachers use an effective range of adaptive teaching strategies in lessons to engage all pupils. Our focus on adaptive teaching, as outlined in the School Development Plan has significantly improved the quality of teaching and learning at St. Sebastian’s and has been pivotal in our accreditation as a Centre of Excellence for Inclusion.

Teaching staff endeavour to(remove) provide a rich, broad and balanced curriculum offer, meeting the needs of all pupils. We have designed and planned our curriculum to offer a range of experiences, which contribute to every pupil receiving a full, enriched, enhanced curriculum. Our pupils benefit from a plethora of academic, spiritual, moral, social and cultural activities to enhance their wellbeing and enrich the lives of those in our whole school community, instilling British Values (democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect for all, regardless of beliefs).

Our curriculum is progressive. Each subject area is meticulously planned to ensure progression in skills and knowledge -for each cohort. Medium term plans ensure key knowledge is learned….. This promotion of British values and pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is at the heart of our work. We promote equality of opportunity and diversity so that our ethos and culture prevent any form of discrimination. This we have built on, since we provided teaching resources on the DfE Educate Against Hate website, and offered training on the teaching of PREVENT in primary school, to the DfE Counter Extremism Reference Group.

We pride ourselves in the strength of our continued work with parents, the parish and wider community. Collaboratively, we can positively influence our pupils’ feelings of self-worth and self-belief. This way, our pupils are happier, more confident, ready and equipped to tackle any challenge they may face.

All staff at St. Sebastian’s ensure that from our pupils’ different starting points, they make good progress academically, emotionally, creatively, socially and physically. Ongoing teacher assessment will ensure that knowledge, understanding and skills are secured and embedded so that children attain highly and are fully prepared for their next stage of education. Children will take pride in all that they do, be motivated to do their best and will demonstrate emotional resilience and the ability to persevere when they encounter challenge. Our staff at St. Sebastian’s Catholic Primary School work hard to ensure all children leave our school with confidence in their own abilities.

We have invested much staff training time and training budget, to improve and develop curriculum provision, working with the Local Authority, to improve our “catch up” offer and curriculum progression mapping. Co-ordinator subject monitoring takes place termly, with the production of well-written and informative reports for governors with subject responsibility. Curriculum leaders have developed refined ‘Subject Looks’ whereby co-ordinators monitor focused areas for more effective subject evaluation of strengths and areas to develop.

Enjoyment of the curriculum promotes achievement, confidence and good behaviour. Children feel safe to try new things. Our pupils work collaboratively with their peers and independently as inquisitive learners, who are motivated to excel and who have a thirst for learning. St. Sebastian’s pupils embrace challenge and are resilient learners. Our curriculum enables our pupils to become good citizens and demonstrate an appreciation for each other, the school community and the wider world. Our pupils are respectful and show tolerance and acceptance to those from different faiths and backgrounds.

We believe all of our children will:

• Develop as well-rounded citizens with a clear understanding of values such as love, responsibility and friendship.
• Be academically and physically prepared for their next stage of education, Modern Britain and the wider world.
• Confidently recall key knowledge from current and previous areas of learning.
• Confidently apply knowledge to their learning across the curriculum.
• Be confident in using and applying high-level vocabulary.
• Be articulate and confident to talk about a wide range of topics.
• Demonstrate greater levels of resilience and motivation, and a growth mind-set when faced with different types of challenge.
• Leave St. Sebastian’s “secondary school ready” – respectful, skilful and ambitious, with the motivation and passion to continue to learn and with a thirst for life and all it has to offer.
• Appreciate how to make positive contributions to the local community and beyond.