Curriculum

At Templecroft School, our pupils follow the National Curriculum. This is taught focussing on specific subjects delivered creatively. Our curriculum boosts enjoyment and achievement as well as preparing our pupils for the next stage of their educational journey. Each subject has been planned and adapted to the needs of our children and includes relevant subject specific research to support their learning. There is an emphasis on language development and the acquisition of essential skills.

Children are encouraged to retrieve previous learning to embed and develop their understanding further. Personal, social, and emotional development is given a high profile within school so that our children can develop confidence in their own identity, gain good self-esteem and a positive view of themselves. As a school, we want our children to understand that their identity is personal to them, and it is important that they respect and understand their own needs and wants. To improve pupils’ spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development our curriculum promotes basic British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths and beliefs. At a suitable level, this helps the children to understand the importance of respect so that when they leave school they are fully prepared for life in modern Britain. It is also essential to learn protective behaviours for personal safety both online and ‘out and about’.

Through careful and flexible planning, Qualified Teachers meet the needs of individual pupils and address gaps in knowledge and understanding. Individual, personalised learning programmes are designed for specific pupils with complex needs using an adapted curriculum to develop language, communication, thinking, self-awareness, knowledge of the world, play, social and creative skills. Staff have grand expectations of pupils’ achievements and plan lessons making sure all pupils make progress and can celebrate their own learning.

Templecroft School provides a curriculum that is planned and delivered in a personalised and differentiated approach. We recognise that children learn in separate ways, so we provide visual, kinaesthetic, and auditory (where appropriate) resources.

Pupils are taught by Qualified Teachers in small class groups supported by specialist Teaching Assistants. The prominent level of staffing allows for individual and small group work as needed and the pace and style of teaching is modified to ensure all children can access lessons and make good progress. All staff have specialist qualifications ensuring an excellent quality of support for children’s individual learning needs.

PSHE/RHE is an important area of our curriculum and helps prepare our children for future independence, citizenship, healthy lifestyles, and personal safety. This includes an adapted PSHE curriculum that includes relevant research. PSHE runs throughout our school daily through PSHE lessons and activities, forest school, enrichment activities, and focused assembly time linked to our school values.

Our pupils need access to wider experiences to consolidate their learning and provide purposeful learning. As a school, we provide a wide range of educational visits and a variety of sporting events, including attending competitions with other local schools.

Pupils at Templecroft School make excellent progress. As a team, we constantly assess our pupils learning and progress. We use a range of assessment tools to monitor whether our curriculum is having an impact on teaching and learning. All teachers follow clearly adapted long term plans and medium-term plans for each subject.

Teachers are highly skilled and able to adapt to the needs of each individual pupil. As a school, we use teacher assessments to collate progress and assessment data. This is collected six times a year and then used to provide pupil progress meetings to discuss pupils’ achievements and identify any barriers to learning that may need extra intervention.

School council meet regularly and discuss how to improve the school and whether the curriculum is engaging and inspiring! All pupil feedback is shared and discussed in pastoral meetings with the pastoral team.

Baseline assessments are used when pupils start of their educational journey – This measures pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills.