At Barrow School we offer a broad, balanced and academically rigorous curriculum for all our learners. As a church school we are inspired by Jesus’ intention for the lives of His people.
I have come that they may have life and have it to the full – John 10:10
Everything starts with the child and how we as professionals can craft a learning environment for them which nurtures their mind, body and soul to develop a happy, healthy and well-rounded citizen of the world – a child who can live and enjoy life to the full.
Our curriculum provision has been developed with a clear intent to:
A Knowledge-based Curriculum
Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage are taught using the EYFS framework with
an emphasis on developing key skills, knowledge and understanding through direct
teaching and purposeful play. The statutory National Curriculum is taught across Key
Stages 1 and 2 through a range of evidence based curriculum resources and approaches.
Our curriculum is designed with knowledge at its heart to ensure that children develop a
strong vocabulary base and understanding of the world. The curriculum promotes long-
term learning and we believe that progress means knowing more and remembering more.
We have developed a curriculum inspired by current research on how memory works, to
ensure that children are taught in a way in which they can remember the content in future
years. We make use of knowledge organisers (which are sent with each key unit) to
ensure children know exactly which information is expected to be learned over the course
of their topic.
We work closely with Unity Schools Partnership, our local research school and the Unity
Teaching Hub to support our practice. We have adopted Curriculum with Unity Schools
Partnership (CUSP) as our central curriculum strategy and this outlines core content in a
spaced and interleaved sequence for History, Geography, Science and Art. This is made
up of a long term sequence that is supported by evidence-led learning modules and high-
quality teaching resources that clearly outline what pupils should know, be able to do and
remember at key points in their Primary education.
We also deliver CUSP Reading and CUSP Writing as the basis of our English curriculum.
It is an evidence informed, carefully sequenced English curriculum, which maps core
content in Reading and Writing across the primary journey, ensuring that learning is taught
and revisited over time so that pupils commit their understanding to the long-term memory.
All CUSP subjects have been built around evidence-led practice in the fields of education
and cognitive science.
The Barrow BIG IDEAS
We also believe that our children deserve and need us to provide more than just the National
Curriculum. Life has so much more to offer and our children have so much more to learn and
experience. With this in mind we worked to prioritise the things we wanted our children to
experience during their time with us. We have, therefore, developed a set of ‘BIG IDEAS for our
curriculum which we believe support us in meeting the needs of our pupils. These curriculum
drivers relate to:
- the needs of our children here at Barrow
- the needs of our wider community
- the values of our school
- the location of our school
At the core of our BIG IDEAS are Identity, Connection, Legacy, Adventure, Imagination and
Possibility. We use these drivers work alongside our school’s Christian values programme to
underpin the development work we undertake in all areas of school life and to ensure that our
curriculum offer is enriched and personalised
to our children and their families. Further information can be found on the Barrow BIG IDEAS page.
Our Pedagogical Approach
We have designed our curriculum to ensure coherence and connectivity so that knowledge, skills
and concepts are introduced, built on over time, revisited and assessed. We believe that a well-
connected curriculum will enable our children to grow intellectually, spiritually and emotionally. It
will enable them to become increasingly knowledgable and make sense of complex concepts that
might otherwise be taught in isolation.
