‘Our children sit at the centre of everything we do’

‘Everybody is different, everybody is welcome’

At Dalestorth Primary and Nursery School we have developed and adopted the two mantras above as guiding principles for everything we do and every decision we make. Before the Covid pandemic of 2020-21 we were always a school that was known locally for academic success and also for the excellent care it gave to all its children.

Since this time, we have worked extremely hard to build on the firm foundations which have been in place for many years. Our children only get one chance to learn and build the foundational skills in the early years of their education and through school so that they are ready for the challenges of Key Stage 3 and beyond. We looked at our curriculum and made some bold choices about every subject. We decided that the quality of our pedagogy had to be of the same high quality for every child in every subject. Our children all deserve the most broad and balanced curriculum we can give them.

To facilitate this, leaders across school and at different levels have put together a progressive curriculum in each subject which is built upon the bedrocks of the drivers we decided upon in 2020. These being that every child should have access to high-quality experiences; have a love of reading through exposure to high quality texts; are able to articulate and reason about the world around them through a highly developed vocabulary; are challenged to acquire a broad and balanced range of skills and knowledge and are given opportunities to develop socially, morally, spiritually and culturally and demonstrate our 5 Busy Bee values.

Over the past 5 years, leaders have put together and constantly sort to improve what we offer year-on-year. We have also developed a clear and concise teaching and learning framework which we expect to see followed by all of our practitioners across school. A copy is attached below. It follows principles which we have put together from our own research and by reading widely, the research of influential academics and education professionals across the globe.

Teachers receive termly updates to read or listen to for their own CPD and these updates are discussed during staff meetings and phase meeting sessions each term. The teaching and learning framework has been developed around what leaders and teachers think will work for our children at Dalestorth, whilst also ensuring that we adapt our approach for every child so that they can be as successful as possible across the curriculum.