With God as our guide, we are committed to:

• Developing curiosity by opening our children’s minds to a limitless world of possibilities
• Inspiring, challenging and supporting children to achieve and excel in a nurturing environment
• Building a community through faith, resilience, tolerance and harmony where each individual is valued and will thrive

Our children will journey through St Bartholomew's as kind, courageous, respectful and curious citizens, their passion for learning ignited and their self-belief and wellbeing nurtured. Every child will have the chance to shine and will leave us prepared for a future of limitless possibilities.

At St Bartholomew's our curriculum is broad, balanced and ambitious for all. It is exciting, relevant and meaningful, and responds to the needs of the individuals within our learning community, empowering them to shine academically and flourish spiritually, socially, emotionally, morally and culturally.

Permeating our curriculum are the core values of our school – kindness, respect and perseverance - together with the British values of individual liberty, mutual respect, democracy and the rule of law. As a school we have signed the Lewisham Race Equality pledge and committed to the Diocesan anti-racism charter, and we endeavour to plan and teach a curriculum that is inclusive and actively promotes equality for all.

We are currently designing our curriculum around four key drivers:

Leaders are currently in the process of developing a fifth driver and will be planning and implementing this within the curriculum across the 2022/23 academic year:

We have designed our curriculum with the following in mind:

We want relationships, health and sex education (RHSE) to lie at the heart of our curriculum, to meet our children’s needs. We follow a whole-school progression of themes across the school, which are taught both explicitly and as part of each year group’s termly themes.

As part of our PSHE curriculum, financial education based on the ‘Lifesavers’ programme is taught throughout all year groups. This is an innovative, values-based financial literacy programme that gives children the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to manage their money wisely. Our approach to financial education explores what it means to be wise, generous, just and thankful for our money. Through the Lifesavers programme, we run our own savings bank overseen by staff but run by Year 6 pupils. The rationale for this is a whole-community approach that involves parents, credit unions and others by helping children learn about money.

Quality texts are integral to our curriculum approach, as we recognise that fluency in reading enables children to have access to the full curriculum entitlement. It is our role to ensure children leave us being able to articulate themselves clearly, and read and write confidently and effectively. We choose quality texts to drive learning in English and as the basis for the teaching of writing. During the term, children will encounter narrative, poetry and non-fiction texts. As part of the development of core skills, children are read to each day.

We endeavour to ensure that children see a relevance and a purpose to their learning, so we plan for learning to build towards a purposeful outcome at the end of the term. This is an opportunity for children to showcase their learning to a wider audience, perhaps through an exhibition to the school community, or through the publication of a class text.

Central to all of the above, and to our curriculum design, is the expectation of well-thought-out teaching and learning delivered by all staff. Teaching staff use our curriculum progression documents to create coherent learning sequences, so that children develop knowledge and skills over time; both within their year group curriculum, but also building on, and making connections with, prior knowledge from other years in school. Staff identify the ‘sticky knowledge’ that they want children to learn through each new theme, and design opportunities for the children to practice and apply this knowledge in a range of different contexts; deep, long-term learning is achieved.

We are currently developing our understanding of the evidence from cognitive science as to how children learn best and how learning is retained in long-term memory. We are exploring how interleaving and longitudinal learning may further complement our current curriculum model. All curriculum decisions in school are based on current research.

Continuing professional development (CPD) for all staff is a priority to empower them with the skills and knowledge necessary to deliver the highest standards across the entire curriculum. Subject leaders all have the necessary expertise to play a pivotal role in both the design and delivery of their subject areas; ensuring a clear progression of both skills and knowledge across all year groups, underpinned by a robust assessment system.