Curriculum Intent Statement

At Guildhall Feoffment our intent is to provide a meaningful education that ignites and stimulates our children’s minds, challenges them to think critically and promotes a lifelong love of learning. The aim of our curriculum is to help them to discover the knowledge necessary to understand the world they live in and skills to help them process this knowledge effectively. We want to develop the children’s talents, passions and curiosity; and for the experience of the curriculum to prepare them for their next steps in learning and their lives in the modern world.

We will always focus on the whole-child’s development rather than purely their academic achievements, and we believe it is just as important to us that they develop healthy lifestyles, positive attitudes, thoughtful dispositions, global values as well as ways of thinking that will promote their sense of well-being, self-belief, empathy and happiness.

Our curriculum furthermore enables our children to know their rights and responsibilities in school, in our community and in a global society. We want the children to understand how diverse our world is and to be respectful of everyone, no matter their background or circumstances.

Our curriculum encompasses not only the statutory requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage and the National Curriculum, but also a rich variety of learning intentions that engage the children in thinking and learning beyond our statutory obligation. We aim to inspire children to pursue further learning beyond the classroom walls and the end of the school day. Our curriculum has the ambition of developing all children’s potential: fostering a growth mindset, and critical thinking skills; ensuring positive attitudes to learning; developing their curiosity, resilience and risk-taking; promoting their willingness to make mistakes and challenge themselves.

Our curriculum themes are structured in such a way that across each year there is a balance of history and geography based themes which the children will engage with.  These build progressively through the school so-as-to link to prior learning and provide a foundation for next steps in understanding. Where possible and helpful the curriculum makes cross-curricular links with other subjects, although this is not forced and some subjects are taught discretely if that is most appropriate.

To enrich our school curriculum we will utilise as many practical and first-hand experience; visitors, educational visits, learning outside the classroom, events and home learning opportunities as possible to keep the learning exciting and involve the whole school community.

We regularly review, evaluate and monitor our curriculum to ensure it has maximum impact on the children’s learning (standards, personal development and learning for life). Monitoring activities include curriculum assessment, data analysis, children’s feedback via the school council and class learning forums, staff feedback, parent/carer feedback through our annual survey, pupil progress meetings, subject leader evaluations and governor monitoring visits.

Please refer to the individual intent statements for detail about the drive behind each subject and the topic overviews as a guide to the curriculum plan. The topic overviews and timetables provide current curriculum information for each year group. If you would like paper copies of any of these please contact the school office at admin@guildhallfeoffment.suffolk.sch.uk.