International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP)

The LAT approach to the curriculum is delivered within relevant and purposeful contexts; it is built upon prior learning, and is designed to be challenging, interesting and motivational to all pupils. We aim to create inquiring, lifelong learners who respect and care for the world they live in and all those who live in it. LAT learners will understand how they are connected to the world in order to take action to improve their own lives, and the lives of local and global communities.

International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP)

The IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) is a student-centered approach to education for children aged 3-12. Through the PYP, we nurture and develop young students as caring, active participants in a lifelong journey of learning.

As part of achieving authorisation as an IB school, our curriculum opens up our learners to think more internationally and evolves to respond to the challenges and opportunities in our rapidly changing world.

The International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme is the vehicle through which we deliver the National Curriculum across the Trust. This underpins our ambitious, rigorous and innovative approach to curriculum implementation, and supports our goal of ensuring that all pupils, irrespective of starting point or background, have access to a high-quality, transformative primary education that sets them up for life.

Pupil agency is at the core of an IB education. Our pupils are empowered to have voice, choice and ownership in their own learning. We acknowledge that children are natural inquirers and so we foster their innate sense of wonder and curiosity and structure our learning in such a way as to enable them to direct and take responsibility for their learning. Agency is strongly connected to self-efficacy (Bandura 2001) and therefore, by developing pupil agency, we are also developing pupils’ belief in themselves and their ability to succeed. When pupils feel agentic, they see themselves as having the confidence and competency to take personal or collective action to make a positive difference to the world or to bring about a positive change in their own lives as a result of their learning.

PYP units of inquiry set the scene for pupils to engage with one of six Transdisciplinary Themes. These themes have global significance and are selected for their relevance to the real world. Consequently, learning is focused on inquiries into issues and ideas that transcend traditional subject boundaries, placing National Curriculum learning in meaningful and relevant contexts. The Key Concepts and Related Concepts further help to focus and define the scope of an inquiry, ensuring that we are not only meeting the requirements of the National Curriculum, but that we have also clearly defined the conceptual understanding or “big idea” we want pupils to understand at the end of the unit. Teaching staff are given the professional freedom to structure their timetables in a manner that is flexible and responsive to pupil inquiry.

The six transdisciplinary themes:

• Sharing the planet

• How we express ourselves

• Who we are

• Where we are in time and place

• How the world works

• How we organise ourselves

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