The curriculum at St Joseph’s reflects the requirements to provide a broad and balanced curriculum as per the Academies Act 2010, and the National Curriculum programmes of study which we have chosen to follow.

Our intent is to provide a knowledge-rich curriculum with a spiral approach, where learning is recapped and built upon both throughout the year and as children progress through school. Our aim is for children to know more, do more and remember more. This is done through a whole host of creative and memorable ways. We want to develop a love of learning for our children in order to produce lifelong learners. Reading plays a big part of our curriculum as we believe this is the gateway to learning. As such, we put a large emphasis on ensuring our children can read to a good level, through our Phonics lessons and Accelerated reader. More can be seen on this in the Curriculum areas.

Our curriculum also reflects requirements for inclusion and equality as set out in the Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice 2014 and Equality Act 2010, and refers to curriculum-related expectations of governing boards set out in the Department for Education’s Governance Handbook.

Further information on how we achieve this can be found in our statement of equality information and objectives, and in our SEND policy and information report.

In Key Stage 2, we teach History, Geography, Art and DT on a 2 year cycle, meaning Year 3 and 4 will cover content at the same time. As will Year 5 and 6. In 2023-24, we are covering Cycle B. You can see more about the topics we cover in our school here: Curriculum Overview

The National Curriculum

The guide below explains about the new National Curriculum, introduced from September 2014, and which became statutory from 2015:

Read Write Inc.

Our school uses Read Write Inc. Phonics for our children in Foundation class to Year 2 and for our children in Years 3 and 4 who need to catch up. The four Read Write Inc. programmes are carefully matched to the new curriculum, giving your children the best chance of success in the national tests. They show teachers, teaching assistants and parents step-by-step how to teach all children to become fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers. Read Write Inc. Phonics is used by over a quarter of the UK’s primary schools. It is a comprehensive literacy programme, weaving decoding, comprehension, writing and spelling together seamlessly. Ruth Miskin developed the programme during her time as a headteacher in Tower Hamlets. She believes that in order for a school to be successful, every headteacher needs to adopt a consistent whole-school approach to teaching reading, writing and spelling. Fidelity to the teaching programme, rigorous assessment, tracking and one-to-one tutoring ensure that schools guarantee progress for every child.For information and tutorials on how to support your child learning to read go to www.ruthmiskin.com/en/parents .

Assessment Guides for Parents

The documents below aim to help parents/carers understand the Key Stage 1 and 2 national test assessment results: