Curriculum for Wales

Vision - The Four Purposes

This workshop provides the opportunity for staff to think about the school’s vision along with the four purposes and discuss how they might be used when planning the future of your school.

Task:

The task is designed to promote thinking about the four purposes and their key characteristics. Staff should be encouraged to discuss and list the skills all learners will need to acquire in order to achieve the characteristics as well as give examples of experiences needed to facilitate this.

There are four pages supplied, each pertaining to one of the four purposes. You may wish to have four different groups or carousel the task to enable a rich discussion. Facilitators should refer to the principles and considerations given here to lead the discussion. We have also supplied an example of suggested skills and experiences but this is by no means exhaustive.

Whole School

Department / AoLE

Example skills

2. Principles of Design - Whole School Approach

This workshop provides the opportunity for staff to engage with the principle of a whole school approach.

Task:

Staff will discuss what is meant by a whole school approach in relation to Curriculum for Wales, considering the key principles which can be used as a starting point. Additionally, a series of questions is provided for consideration when designing your own local curriculum.

Using the Whole School Approach page, read the narrative and principles and then discuss the key considerations as a whole staff or in groups as appropriate. You may wish to consider the additional questions below.

In considering the four purposes:

Where are they communicated?
How are they communicated?
Where are they discussed?
Where are they seen, felt or heard?

In considering the benefits for the learner of a whole school approach:

Who has been involved in these discussions?
What are the benefits?
Who needs to collaborate?
Which aspects have been discussed?

In considering whole school planning:

Who needs to be involved in the planning?
What is our starting point?
What do we mean by a comprehensive education?
What cannot be left to chance?

Following discussion, you may wish to use the Pre-flight tool to rate your school with regard to a whole school approach considering the extent to which everyone in your school community shares a commitment to the holistic education of all learners.

This is an aspect you may wish to return to as you develop and refine your curriculum.

3. Methodology - The 'Hook'

This workshop uses data from StreetCheck, a website based resource which produces graphs to represent the social, cultural, linguistic and economic landscape of your school community. This is one way of exploring your school’s unique context.

Task:

To download the data for your area follow this link to access StreetCheck:

🌐 https://www.streetcheck.co.uk/

You may wish to discuss what the data tells you about your locality, for example:

If sexual and violent crime is a major consideration in your locality, is this reflected in the health and well-being planning?
If employment is low, consider how this effects the aspiration for your learners.

Further considerations:

Do we as school leaders, teachers and governors have an agreed understanding of the social, cultural, linguistic and economic landscape of our school and its community?
What are the needs of this community?
What are the needs of our learners?
How do we use the ‘hook’ to design a curriculum which reflects the local, national and international contexts unique to our school?
How can we use the hook when planning the development of skills, knowledge and experiences for all our learners?

Please note this is just one way of discussing the hook for your school and should be used in conjunction with a range of relevant data sources including a focus on learner voice. When using Street Check please be aware that searches should take into account where your learners live.

An example of the data that can be created is downloadable by clicking on the image below.

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Vision - The Four Purposes

2. Principles of Design - Whole School Approach

3. Methodology - The 'Hook'