Curriculum Summary
The Curriculum for Wales provides guidance to help our school develop its own curriculum, enabling our learners to develop towards the four purposes of the curriculum – the starting point and aspiration for every child and young person in Wales.
The school’s vision is aligned to the national aspirations of the four purposes and the curriculum is being developed to align to the mandatory requirements.
Nantymoel Primary School will be implementing the new curriculum for Wales from September 2022. Our school is working to action and review this curriculum in order to ensure a balanced, equitable and appropriate curriculum that enables learners to become the best that they can be. There will be a significant emphasis on the wellbeing of learners and their voice in their learning journey. The school has shared information about the new curriculum with stakeholders and has sought the views of learners, governors, parents and carers through questionnaires and surveys on what could be included.
Nantymoel Primary School is committed to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). All decisions related to the curriculum considers the impact on leaners’ mental health and wellbeing.
Article 26 UNCRC ‘Your right to become the best you can be’.
The Curriculum
The National Framework provides guidance for the required elements of our curriculum, with the four purposes at the heart of all learning experiences. The four purposes inform planning to ensure that children engage in a wide range of experiences.
Our curriculum will be broad and balanced, is suitable for learners of differing ages, abilities and aptitudes and includes learning opportunities within and across the 6 Areas of Learning and Experience, with content drawn from the statements of what matters and informed by the national principles of progression. It also aligns to the mandatory requirements of teaching Welsh, English, Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE), Religion, Values and Ethics (RVE), and the cross curricula skills of literacy, numeracy and digital competence.
Learning Progression and Assessment
Our school curriculum is underpinned by the national mandatory principles of progression which describe what it means for learners to progress and the capacities and behaviours our staff will seek to support, regardless of a learners’ stage of development. They are designed to be used by all teachers across Wales to:
At our school we believe assessment and progression is fundamental to ensuring we achieve our school vision of Laugh, Learn, Achieve – Together we Succeed. We use a variety of assessment strategies, evidence informed to enable each individual learner to make progress at an appropriate pace. We ensure our processes identify learners who require further support or challenge and they provide rich qualitative data for us to inform next steps in learning for individuals.
Our new assessment arrangements ensure active engagement between our learner and the teacher and is based on continually reflecting on “Where are learners in their learning? Where do they need to go? How do we support them to get there?”
Nantymoel Primary School is continuing to review and conduct ongoing assessments for every learner which will be embedded within day-to-day practice throughout the school year.
Reviewing the curriculum
Nantymoel Primary School will continue to work with other professionals and agencies to help us fulfil our duties under the Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Act 2021.
As part of our self-evaluation process we will be reviewing our curriculum offer regularly and will be seeking the views of parents, carers, pupils and governors to feed into improvements to help our curriculum continue to evolve.