Our Curriculum: Belonging, Ambition and Excellence
A curriculum shaped by our children, for our children
At Abingdon Primary School, we are exceptionally proud of the ambitious, bespoke curriculum that we have developed and continue to shape for the children and communities we serve.
Our curriculum is built on a simple but powerful principle:
The National Curriculum provides the entitlement. We deliberately shape that entitlement around our children.
We do not see the National Curriculum as something that is simply delivered to our pupils. We interpret it expertly, enrich it purposefully and connect it deliberately to the children we know so well.
Our curriculum is shaped by children’s prior knowledge, lived experiences, cultures, languages, interests and aspirations. It is then designed to take them beyond what they already know, opening doors to new knowledge, new experiences and new possibilities.
This creates a powerful relationship:
Our community shapes our curriculum, and our curriculum shapes our community.
We want every child to see themselves within their education while simultaneously developing an understanding of a world much bigger than their own experience.
Our ambition is for every child to leave Abingdon with the knowledge, vocabulary, oracy, experiences, character, confidence and independence they need to participate fully in society and to flourish, thrive and achieve.
Belonging First
Our vision is to create an inclusive community where every child and family feels safe, valued, understood and connected.
We believe that belonging comes first.
When children know that they belong, they are more likely to attend and participate.
When they participate, they develop confidence and agency.
When confidence and agency grow, children are increasingly willing to take risks, persevere, contribute and learn.
This creates the foundations for children to flourish personally, thrive socially and achieve academically.
Our inclusion strategy is therefore not a separate strand of school improvement.
Inclusion is our operating model.
It shapes our curriculum, our teaching, our pastoral systems, our Personal Development offer, our relationships with families and the experiences we provide beyond the classroom.
Our diverse community is one of our greatest strengths. Children and families bring languages, cultures, faiths, traditions, experiences and perspectives from across the world.
We do not see this diversity as something our curriculum has to accommodate.
It is something our curriculum is enriched by.
Our Abingdon ARCH
Everything we do is underpinned by our four Abingdon pillars:
Aspirations
Resilience
Harmony
Commitment
Together, these form our Abingdon ARCH.
The ARCH is not an additional programme. It is the shared language through which we develop children’s character, relationships and approach to learning.
Our curriculum gives children opportunities to develop aspiration by encountering remarkable people, ideas and possibilities.
It develops resilience by teaching children to persevere, reflect, respond to challenge and learn from mistakes.
It develops harmony by helping children understand themselves, appreciate difference, respect others and contribute positively to their community.
It develops commitment by teaching children the value of sustained effort, responsibility and seeing things through.
We want children not simply to know our values, but to live them.
Curriculum by Design
Our curriculum is deliberately designed and coherently sequenced so that knowledge, vocabulary, concepts and skills build over time.
Teachers and leaders consider carefully:
- What do we want children to know?
- What do they already know?
- What experiences and knowledge do they bring with them?
- What misconceptions might they hold?
- What vocabulary and concepts must be explicitly taught?
- How does this learning connect with previous learning?
- How will it prepare children for future learning?
- How does it reflect our community?
- What will broaden children’s understanding of the wider world?
- How will children apply and communicate what they know?
- What adaptations will ensure every child can access the same ambitious curriculum?
This means that our curriculum is not a collection of disconnected topics.
Knowledge builds. Vocabulary builds. Understanding builds. Confidence builds.
Children revisit important knowledge and concepts in increasingly sophisticated contexts, allowing them to make connections, deepen understanding and remember more over time.
Our curriculum is therefore both ambitious and coherent: ambitious in what every child is expected to learn, and coherent in the way that learning is deliberately sequenced.
Our Children Are the Starting Point
Every child arrives at Abingdon with a unique combination of experiences, knowledge, language, culture, interests and aspirations.
We use this knowledge carefully.
A child’s lived experience may become the starting point for a geographical enquiry, a historical comparison, a scientific investigation, a mathematical problem, a piece of writing or a discussion about identity and community.
But we do not allow prior experience to become a ceiling.
We start with what children know and take them further.
Our curriculum provides both mirrors and windows.
Children see their own lives, cultures, languages and identities reflected positively in what they learn, while also encountering experiences, people, places and perspectives beyond their own.
We want every child to be able to say:
“I can see myself in this curriculum, and I can also see a world beyond myself.”
Representation That Is Deliberate and Meaningful
Representation is carefully considered across our curriculum.
Our choice of books, authors, illustrators, artists, scientists, mathematicians, musicians, historical figures, geographers and other significant individuals is purposeful.
Across subjects, we identify key figures whose achievements and contributions broaden children’s understanding of what people can accomplish.
Our literature curriculum is particularly important.
Texts are selected because they provide:
Mirrors – opportunities for children to see themselves, their families, cultures and experiences positively represented.
Windows – opportunities to encounter lives, cultures, perspectives and experiences different from their own.
Our world maps, texts, examples, role models and learning experiences ensure that diversity is an everyday part of our curriculum.
Children encounter different cultures, languages, faiths and traditions authentically and respectfully.
This strengthens belonging while simultaneously developing children’s understanding of the wider world.
Children should never have to choose between seeing themselves represented and accessing an academically ambitious curriculum.
Academic Rigour and Inclusion
Our commitment to inclusion does not reduce academic ambition.
It makes academic ambition possible.
We maintain high expectations for every child while recognising that children may require different pathways, adaptations or levels of support to reach those expectations.
String foundations means that children are expected to apply core reading, writing and mathematics skills consistently across all areas of the curriculum and where errors or misconceptions happen, they are quickly identified and supported.
Our teachers know their pupils and use that knowledge to remove barriers to learning.
Adaptive teaching, explicit instruction, carefully designed scaffolding, responsive questioning, appropriate use of adults and consistent routines enable children to access ambitious learning without creating unnecessary dependency.
Where children need additional support, we provide it.
Where children require greater challenge, we provide it.
Where children require more time, repetition or alternative approaches, we provide these too.
But the ambition remains.
Inclusion means widening access to excellence, not redefining excellence.
Personal Development: Preparing Children for Life
Our curriculum is enhanced by a rich Personal Development offer that is deliberately connected to our school vision, our inclusion strategy and the Abingdon ARCH.
We recognise that education is about more than academic outcomes.
We want children to develop:
- confidence;
- independence;
- resilience;
- aspiration;
- leadership;
- communication and oracy;
- physical and emotional wellbeing;
- social responsibility;
- cultural understanding;
- teamwork;
- empathy;
- the ability to make positive choices;
- the confidence to contribute to their community.
Our Personal Development programme is shaped by our children.
We listen to what they are interested in, what they aspire to experience and what barriers might prevent them from participating.
This means that our clubs, leadership opportunities, visits, enrichment and wider experiences are developed with children, not simply for them.
Children are not passive recipients of school life.
They help to shape it.
Abingdon Armour for Life
A distinctive part of our Personal Development offer is our Abingdon Armour for Life.
The Armour for Life reflects our belief that an excellent primary education must prepare children not only to succeed academically, but to flourish, thrive and participate confidently in everyday life.
The Armour makes the life skills and character strengths children need explicit, deliberate and teachable.
These are not skills we assume children will simply acquire.
We teach them. We model them. We practise them. We revisit them. We celebrate them.
The Armour for Life includes the practical, social, emotional and personal skills that enable children to become increasingly independent and confident.
Some may appear simple, but they are hugely significant:
- tying shoelaces;
- making a cup of tea;
- preparing simple food;
- looking after personal belongings;
These experiences are particularly important within our diverse community because children arrive with different experiences and opportunities.
The Armour ensures that every child has access to a common entitlement of life skills while respecting and valuing the skills and knowledge children already bring from home.
Turning the ARCH into Action
The Armour for Life provides a practical way for children to live our ARCH.
A child learning to tie their shoelace is developing more than a practical skill.
They are developing:
Commitment – persevering until they succeed.
Resilience – trying again when it does not work the first time.
Aspiration – believing they can learn something new.
Harmony – developing independence so they can contribute to and support others.
The same principles apply when a child learns to make a drink, manage money, travel safely, speak confidently to an unfamiliar adult, resolve a disagreement or take responsibility for a younger child.
The ARCH becomes visible in children’s actions.
We want our values to become habits.
We want children to develop the confidence to think:
“I can work this out.”
“I can have another go.”
“I can ask for help.”
“I can help someone else.”
“I can contribute.”
“I can achieve something that once felt difficult.”
From Belonging to Flourishing and Achievement
The Armour for Life is one part of a much wider cycle of development across our school.
We believe:
Belonging → Participation → Confidence → Independence → Flourishing → Thriving → Achievement
When children know they belong, they are more willing to participate.
When they participate, they experience success and develop confidence.
As confidence grows, children become more independent and increasingly willing to take positive risks.
Independence and agency enable children to flourish as individuals.
Flourishing creates the foundations for children to thrive within relationships, learning and wider society.
And when children are secure, engaged, confident and equipped to learn, they are better able to achieve academically.
This is why we do not see academic achievement and personal development as competing priorities.
They are mutually reinforcing.
The resilience developed while learning a practical skill supports resilience when tackling a difficult mathematical problem.
The confidence developed through leadership supports confidence when speaking in front of others.
The ability to communicate effectively in everyday situations strengthens children’s classroom oracy.
The commitment required to master a new skill strengthens children’s capacity to persevere with challenging learning.
Life skills are not peripheral to achievement. They are part of the foundations upon which achievement is built.
Making Progress Visible
The Armour for Life also allows us to recognise forms of progress that can otherwise remain invisible.
A child independently preparing a drink, travelling safely, speaking confidently to someone new, managing money, helping another child or persevering with something they previously found difficult represents significant development.
We want children to recognise this progress.
We want families to recognise it.
We want staff to recognise it.
By making these skills explicit, we communicate a powerful message:
Every child can grow. Every contribution matters. Every step towards independence matters.
This is particularly important within an inclusive school.
Children do not all begin from the same starting point, and they will not all progress in exactly the same way.
Our responsibility is to understand each child, identify their next steps, provide the support and opportunities they need and celebrate meaningful progress.
Experiences That Build Cultural Capital
We know that cultural capital develops through both knowledge and experience.
Our curriculum is therefore enriched through educational visits, residential experiences, visitors, performances, sporting opportunities, creative experiences, clubs and leadership.
We actively seek ways to remove financial barriers so that children are not excluded from experiences because of family circumstances.
Our aim is not simply to give children more experiences.
It is to broaden their sense of what is possible.
A child learning to cycle, participating in judo, experiencing Afro Beats, gardening, rollerskating, visiting a farm, meeting an inspiring professional or taking on a leadership role is developing more than a memory.
They are developing vocabulary, confidence, relationships, cultural capital, resilience and aspiration.
These experiences help children discover talents they did not know they possessed and possibilities they had not previously imagined.
Oracy: Giving Every Child a Voice
We place a strong emphasis on oracy because children need more than knowledge.
They need the language and confidence to use it.
Our curriculum deliberately develops children’s vocabulary, listening, discussion, reasoning and confidence in speaking.
Children are taught to explain, question, challenge, justify and articulate their thinking.
For children who speak English as an additional language, we value their home languages as assets while systematically developing the academic English they need to access the curriculum and succeed.
Every child deserves a voice. Our curriculum gives them the knowledge, vocabulary and confidence to use it.
Removing Obstacles to Belonging
Our curriculum and inclusion strategy are inseparable.
We know that children cannot fully benefit from education if barriers to belonging, participation or engagement remain unaddressed.
Our Team Around the Child approach ensures that children’s wider needs are understood and responded to so that they are ready and able to access high-quality teaching.
Our International New Arrivals Hub supports children arriving in the United Kingdom with little or no English, building language, confidence, independence and familiarity with school life while maintaining their connection to the wider school community.
Our Little ARCH provides bespoke provision for children with significant SEND who require a more personalised environment, while maintaining meaningful opportunities for inclusion within the wider school.
Our work with families builds trust, removes barriers and ensures that every family knows that they belong.
We adapt our systems around children rather than expecting children to adapt themselves around our systems.
A Curriculum That Builds Futures
We cannot predict exactly what the world our children will enter will look like.
We can ensure they are equipped to navigate it.
We want children to leave Abingdon with:
secure knowledge;
strong vocabulary;
confident oracy;
curiosity;
resilience;
aspiration;
cultural understanding;
independence;
practical life skills;
a strong sense of identity and belonging;
and the confidence to continue learning.
We want children to understand their place in their community while recognising their place in the wider world.
We want them to know where they have come from while believing in where they might go.
We want them to value their own identity while respecting the identities and experiences of others.
We want them to have both roots and wings.
Our Curriculum Promise
Our curriculum promises every child:
An education that is ambitious.
An education that is inclusive.
An education that reflects who they are.
An education that introduces them to what they do not yet know.
An education that builds systematically on what they already know.
An education that maintains academic rigour while removing barriers.
An education rich in knowledge, language, experience and opportunity.
An education that develops character alongside achievement.
An education that explicitly teaches children the skills they need for life.
An education in which every child can belong, participate, flourish, thrive and achieve.
This is why our curriculum matters.
It is not a curriculum created for an imagined child.
It is the National Curriculum, expertly interpreted, deliberately sequenced, inclusively delivered and brought to life for the children of Abingdon.
It is shaped by their experiences, informed by their prior knowledge, enriched by their cultures and strengthened by their voices.
It maintains the highest academic expectations while recognising that children need more than academic knowledge to flourish.
It develops the knowledge to understand the world, the language to participate in it, the resilience to navigate its challenges, the practical skills to live confidently within it and the aspiration to shape its future.
Our community shapes our curriculum.
Our curriculum shapes our community.
Our ARCH shapes who our children become.
Our Armour for Life equips them for what comes next.
And our shared ambition is simple:
Every child belongs.
Every child flourishes.
Every child thrives.
Every child achieves.
This is the Abingdon curriculum.
For more information on our curriculum and what our curriculum means for your child, please contact the school office or contact Mrs Emma Coupe, Deputy Head Teacher and Teaching and Learning lead.
