CURRICULUM STATEMENT

The curriculum at Anthony Curton and Tilney All Saints places ‘Powerful Knowledge” at the heart of the curriculum.



The knowledge in our curriculum is carefully chosen, sequenced in a meaningful way that enables children to progress incrementally and is highly specialised. Our curriculum is divided into subjects, recognising the identity of the disciplines we study, fostering a love for subject content that will flourish as children move through the curriculum.

Careful and thoughtful planning has allowed a curriculum that weaves important concepts such as fairness, justice, liberty, identity and power through a diverse range of contexts, in both place and time, building examples that children can draw upon as their understanding grows. The knowledge in the curriculum is cumulative, constructing firm foundations from which children can build conceptual understanding and skills over time.

Our curriculum nurtures the minds of children who will think often and deeply. Pupils will be taught meaningful content that builds on their prior knowledge. For many children, particularly those who have not gained it elsewhere, the establishment of that prior knowledge will begin with their very first lesson. Drawing on research-based cognitive science, there are carefully planned opportunities to recall and revisit vital prior knowledge and to strengthen retrieval from lesson to lesson, unit to unit and year to year. The knowledge base encourages children to infer, question, interpret, analyse, argue and reason. Most importantly, our curriculum provides children with the tools they need to participate in their own education that will continue for a lifetime.

For us, a knowledge-rich curriculum is an entitlement for every child, regardless of background. Curriculum coherence ensures that teaching does not jump from topic to topic, but enables children to develop knowledge, and love of subjects. Subject content is crucial to this approach- the content provides the engagement and plants the seeds for a lifetime of learning.

An essential element of a knowledge curriculum is the development of a broad and rich vocabulary, and the ambitious and explicit teaching of this.