At All Saints Catholic Primary School, our bespoke curriculum is broad and balanced, reflecting our school’s unique characteristics and setting. It has been designed and adapted based on our understanding of our children’s needs. Our curriculum builds upon prior learning to ensure that academic achievement, physical and mental wellbeing, character growth, and personal development are intrinsically linked. This equips our pupils with the essential knowledge, skills, and strength of character needed to be successful in life.

Our mission statement prepares children to leave All Saints as caring, resilient, and creative learners ready for the next phase of their education. We nurture children who are ambitious and kind, poised to make a positive impact in the world. We strive to ensure our children take pride in who they are and what they can achieve.

The curriculum is co-designed by staff and children, utilizing the arts and our rich cultural heritage to enhance the learning experience. It reflects the distinctive beliefs, values, and stories of our community, encouraging pupils to be creative and to fully utilize their gifts. Our balanced approach maintains high standards in core subjects while offering a wide range of experiences, ensuring every pupil at All Saints makes excellent progress both academically and personally.

Our diverse community enriches our children’s aspirations, demonstrating the possibilities for their future lives. Our gospel values underpin all we do, promoting a sense of self-worth rooted in the understanding that each one of us is precious to God. A strong focus on speech, language, and communication enhances children’s ability to express their learning, demonstrating quality thinking and application of skills. We prioritise physical and mental wellbeing within our curriculum design, offering opportunities for spiritual, moral, social, and cultural understanding. Every child will have access to the full curriculum.

Our curriculum is designed to:

• Be coherent and carefully sequenced across all subject areas, enabling children to know more and remember more.
• Develop creative individuals who collaborate, cooperate, and view failure as an opportunity to learn.
• Be ambitious, with a clear focus on developing foundational skills essential for accessing the full curriculum. Language development, reading, and writing are fundamental to knowledge acquisition and communication across all subjects.
• Foster a sense of responsibility among pupils towards their family, community, and the wider world, encouraging positive contributions to fundamental world values.
• Ensure high aspirations for all pupils.
• Instil a love of learning in every child.
• Promote pride in individuality and accomplishments.
• Encourage active, creative contributions while promoting kindness and instilling empathy.
• Provide equal opportunities by removing barriers to learning, regardless of starting points.
• Ensure every pupil understands and embraces modern British values.

Implementation: How Our Curriculum is Taught?

In Nursery and Reception, we follow the ‘Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum’ document alongside guidance from non-statutory Development Matters and OPAL which inform child-development guidance and next steps. Our planning is based on themes, incorporating discrete RE, phonics, maths, and literacy instruction. Medium-term planning outlines intended learning for children working towards the Early Learning Goals. Nursery and Reception teachers collaborate closely with all adults in the EYFS to plan for progression. All staff are involved in evaluating provisions and planning enhancements to support or extend children’s learning. We deliver learning through planned purposeful play and experiences, balancing adult-led and child-initiated activities through a blend of continuous provision and key learning experiences. Play in the Early Years is essential for the holistic development of the child, allowing exploration and understanding of the world. Children develop ideas, learn self-control, and understand the need for rules. They think creatively, communicate with others, and solve problems collaboratively. Our EYFS curriculum is thoughtfully designed for both indoor and outdoor learning environments, recognizing the importance of both.

From Year 1 onward, our curriculum builds on EYFS learning and integrates the requirements of the 2014 National Curriculum in an engaging way. It meets the needs of future citizens and equips all children, including those with SEND and social disadvantages, with foundational life skills.

Curriculum planning enables learners to make connections and ensures that knowledge (substantive) and skills (disciplinary) are learned progressively to reach agreed end points. Lessons include retrieval practice, formative assessment, and opportunities for teachers and support staff to address misconceptions. This approach ensures that learning moves from short-term to long-term memory, enabling learners to know more, remember more, and do more. Our spiral approach in subjects allows for revisiting and reinforcing learning as needed.

We have a clear long-term overview that encourages cross-curricular work around planned topics using key questions. Our Subject Leads and SLT establish the learning through Long-Term Overviews, Medium-Term Plans, and Progression documents, ensuring children appreciate the unique contributions of individual subjects.

Context and relevance are considered in our planning to maximize each child’s cultural capital and knowledge of British values. Cultural capital encompasses the knowledge, attitudes, habits, language, and possessions that enable individuals to demonstrate cultural competence and social status. All Saints Primary School plays a vital role in developing cultural capital through debates, dance, theatre, music, school trips, performing arts, sports activities, and exposure to diverse literature and art. By embedding cultural capital into our curriculum, we aim to bridge gaps between children from differing socio-economic backgrounds, ensuring equal opportunities for all to achieve their full potential. We plan activities each term for all pupils to experience collectively, as individuals, in classes, key stages, and school-wide.

Alongside our academic curriculum, we support learning with our robust personal development program alongside relevant educational visits, guest speakers, overnight residential trips both home and abroad, assemblies, charity days, and responses to current events. Our Learning to Serve program provides a platform for our children to apply their learning in the community and experience how it can make a difference in the lives of others. A wide range of clubs and enrichment activities—such as concerts, sports, competitions, and community engagement—are regular features of our school life. These experiences are crucial for children’s development as lifelong learners and ensure that individual talents are celebrated. Our work alongside In Harmony Liverpool supports this and the breadth of opportunities in conjunction with developing musicianship that this program provides spreads far beyond the classroom into the community and into our international work. 

Our strategy for effective curriculum implementation fosters a culture of collaboration and professional dialogue among subject leaders, delivering a curriculum that builds on prior learning, deepens knowledge, and enhances skills to promote achievement. We engage in a continuous cycle of review and evaluation.

Impact

Everything we do is centred on each child.

Pupils’ progress is measured through ongoing assessments and key assessment points specific to their year group, both formative and summative. Teachers use this data to adjust planning as necessary, addressing gaps in knowledge and misconceptions to maximize every child’s progress. We evaluate how well our children are learning through:

• School progress data analysed by SLT, middle leaders, and class teachers.
• Book looks and learning walks.
• Termly lesson observations.
• Pupil and parent feedback.

Our curriculum aims to avoid overwhelming pupils with information, enabling them to connect prior learning and retain knowledge. The impact is that our children become well-motivated, aspirational, confident, and engaged in their education, preparing them for smooth transitions to the next stages of learning and equipping them for life.

We aspire for all our children to leave All Saints respectful to all, skilled, aspirational, inspirational to others, and kind to everyone.