Sacred Heart Primary School is founded upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ, His teachings and values as seen in the light of the tradition of the Society of the Sacred Heart. The Society has always devoted itself to promoting education and the pursuit of academic excellence. 

The National Curriculum is statutory. It lays out the range of subjects we must teach and sets the standards pupils are expected to reach at the end of each key stage of learning. Our School Curriculum incorporates the National Curriculum and goes beyond it. We have adapted and extended the National Curriculum to meet the particular needs of our pupils. It is a curriculum designed to work for all in our community.

At Sacred Heart Primary School, we offer our pupils an inspiring, well taught, knowledge-rich curriculum that is broad, balanced, diverse and reflective of the global society and culture in which we live. We believe that all children should be challenged to become lifelong learners. Our curriculum will ensure that children reflect positively on their primary school years. Learning should be deep and meaningful and experiences and knowledge that the children gain in lessons will be fully embedded. At each stage of education, our school curriculum prepares pupils for adult life by equipping them with the knowledge and skills they need, to be responsible, respectful and active citizens who contribute positively to society.

Through our curriculum:

We want children to challenge themselves

We celebrate effort as well as achievement and are committed to individual and collective success, placing no ceiling on aspiration and enabling all children to succeed. At Sacred Heart, we believe that the way that children view themselves as learners can be vital to their progress and success, not just at school, but in life beyond the classroom. We want to cultivate and nurture a culture where children know that their intelligence is not fixed, but can change and grow through hard work, effort, determination and practice. Therefore, we encourage children to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth, welcome feedback for learning and be inspired by the success of others. All of these traits are attributed to a 'Growth Mindset’.

We want children to be socially responsible and respectful of one another.  We want our children to learn about their rights, promote rights, be respectful and enjoy all opportunities.

Everyone experiences life challenges that can make us vulnerable and at times, anyone may need additional emotional support. RE and PSHE lessons are both valuable parts of school life. We take the view that positive mental health is everybody’s business and that we all have a role to play. We are committed to promoting positive mental health and emotional wellbeing for all pupils, their families, members of staff and governors.  Using the programme ‘Life to the Full’ by Ten:Ten, our children take part in RSE lessons from Year 1 to Year 6. As well as learning about their bodies and their physical health, they also learn about the importance of emotional well-being.  

During weekly PATHS lessons (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies), the pupils are able to explore their feelings and emotions. The aim of these lessons is to help the children to build and develop positive relationships with others. Nursery also follow the PATHS programme where appropriate and adapt the zones of regulation framework through their ‘emotion monsters’.  The PATHs programme provides weekly planning and resources which build on prior knowledge and makes links to real life scenarios (although teachers often adapt these scenarios to suit the needs of their class). The ‘Control Signals’ and ‘Playground Rules’ promoted in PATHs are displayed in all classrooms and on the school playgrounds. We also encourage discussion of topics at home by regularly sending home PATHs resources such as our ‘Pupil of the Day’ certificates.

We want children to inspire others through their behaviour and attitude

We expect the children to demonstrate exemplary behaviour so they are safe and can participate in all aspects of school life. 

We want children to challenge social inequality, embrace diversity and care about the wider world

We have a diverse school community. Our children need to learn and understand this context. They need to have an understanding of social inequality and how to challenge this in a respectful manner. We want our children to have their own self-identity whilst being respectful and appreciative of others, take pride in their school, celebrate diversity, be socially responsible and believe in and promote our values as shown in our school mission prayer.

We want children to be proud of their school and their achievements

We support them in achieving this through developing a love of learning through effective teaching and a broad and balanced curriculum that reflects the school’s values. We place the child at the centre of learning, nurturing their creativity, developing independence and resilience and ensuring that they are able to access a relevant and appropriate curriculum that meets their needs.

At Sacred Heart School, we believe the best interest of the child should come first and that it is important children are taught about their rights as expressed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  We are proud to be a Gold UNICEF Rights Respecting School.  We want our children to be socially conscious citizens. Comprehensive research from UNICEF shows that a child rights education plays a key role in developing children and young people as active, engaged local and global citizens with the following four findings:

1. Children are happier and healthier

2. Children feel safe in school

3.  Children have better relationships with their peers and the adults who support them

4.  Children become more active and involved in school life, the local community and the wider world

Children have many opportunities to take on leadership roles in school.  These include being an elected member of the:

·        Faith Friend group

·        School Council

·        Eco Council

·        Core and foundation subject councils

·        UNICEF Article 12 Group

·        Playground Friends Group

·        Year 6 prefects

·        Year 6 Head Boy and Head Girl 

Our staff have high aspirations for all our children and want to enable them to succeed.  Learning happens in a relationship between teacher, pupil and the activities children engage with. The quality of teaching and depth of challenge is essential, and added to the attitudes and behaviours pupils bring to learning, leads to high levels of engagement. This is achieved by teachers:

·        having high standards of communication through the development of articulate pupils and strong home-school partnerships.

·        sharing good practice both within school and in the wider learning community and learning from each other.

·        supporting each other to help deliver the school’s vision through high quality appointments (and safer recruitment).

·        having good professional support (CPD) and feeling valued as a member of staff.

Learning in school and more broadly in life is hugely dependent on the ability to read, as is communication in written form. Numerical fluency is core knowledge required by all subjects across the curriculum. Maths develops the skills of reasoning, deduction, problem-solving, representation and logical connection, which are crucial thinking tools for wider learning.

We are committed to ensuring that we provide a wide range of opportunities for children to participate in arts and cultural activities, ensuring that where families are unable to pass on ‘cultural capital’ to their children by the activities they are involved in outside of school, we ensure we do, as we recognise that in many cases, the experiences children have, can be limited to context in which they live. We therefore aim to ensure the children have knowledge that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. This includes wider curriculum opportunities e.g. links with Roehampton University, Rackets Cubed, themed days/weeks, visits to museums in London related to history topics, school residential visits in Years 5 and 6 and the annual visit to Oxford University for more able students (we are linked with Magdalen College and Jesus College). All this helps to ensure that as well as the curriculum being broad and balanced, it is also a tool for social justice.