At St James the Great Academy,  we are passionate about delivering a high-quality curriculum that gives every child, regardless of their starting point,  the opportunity and inspiration to lead a remarkable life. 

We have tailored our remarkable curriculum to meet the needs of our school's context, focusing on what our children need to know to prepare them for, and help them to appreciate, life beyond  St James, whilst maintaining our local identity.  We have designed our curriculum with the intention that our children must have the building blocks to become successful adults, in terms of being able to: gain employment, live healthy lifestyles, be moral citizens and to take opportunities to extend their horizons. 

 We recognise the dynamics of our community, and have developed a  curriculum that supports pupils, enabling them to become resilient citizens, who are able to manage their own feelings and behaviour and who are empathetic to and tolerant of others. We also help our pupils to develop confidence in themselves, a strong sense of moral purpose and respect for others and high aspirations to discover what is possible.

The core skills of reading and maths are at the heart of our curriculum, as fluency in these subjects will give our children choice and opportunity with their future career options. We want our children to be aware of the wider world and their place within it. In addition to this, we have purposely built our topics to feature heavily on geography, history, and science, as these are areas we felt required more emphasis but also areas that inspired our children most.  Each topic is question-focused to stimulate curiosity and provide sharp foci for teaching/learning. We have ensured there is global coverage and that topics grow with our children; topics begin close to the lives of our children and 'open up' as they grow, both in terms of historical and geographical concepts. We have also ensured that our historical topics follow a logical chronology. Throughout our curriculum children will be taken on school excursions, both locally and wider afield, to provide them with an immersive curriculum and opportunities to have experiences outside of their usual context. 

At St James the Great Academy we believe that we have created a friendly, caring and supportive environment that encourages our children to fully learn and develop into well-rounded pupils ready for the challenges of the 21st century.

The staff at St James have worked together to identify our main curriculum drivers; these are the qualities that we strive to provide our children with through our curriculum and they are what drive us to be exceptional teachers.  Our THIRVE drivers encourage pupils to have a positive attitude to develop resilience and determination in preparation for becoming confident members of the local and wider community. They encourage pupils to achieve and gain the best possible outcomes through hard work, exemplary behaviour and a real love for challenge. They encourage pupils to become masters in everything they do and to think outside the box.

At the heart of our curriculum lies our THRIVE drivers; we want all of our children to master these skills to prepare them for the ‘real world’. Therefore, we put them at the heart of our curriculum; we build on them with the national curriculum and present them as our topic inquiry questions.