Mission Statement:

Through the Holy Redeemer, we seek to grow in faith and love, to become great people who make a difference in our world.

Our aim:

‘Fostering an inquisitive mind, where problems are a challenge and mistakes are a learning opportunity; where children have inner determination to succeed and a passion for gaining new knowledge and are empowered to make a difference in the world.’

Intent

Within our school, we aim to create an environment in which children are encouraged to develop a positive mindset and learn the necessary cultural capital to go out into the world and succeed. We have an ethos and approach whereby every child can be successful; where every child can achieve. Our children have access to a high quality, creative curriculum within which they can; take risks, develop higher order thinking skills, build their Learning Power and strive to be the best that they can be.

Implementation

At Holy Redeemer we believe that it is as important to know how to learn, as it is to learn. To this end we have a strong focus within our curriculum, on Building Learning Power (BLP). Alongside National Curriculum (NC) targets, all pupils have a BLP target and are involved in assessing and developing their own LP. Alongside this, staff plan for the development of subject specific skills, and the subject content of the NC is woven through our HR skills-based curriculum.
Our curriculum is text rich and driven by high quality, appropriate books/texts. Where appropriate these texts also drive other areas of the curriculum, to enhance their relevance and support the children’s ability to make links between different areas of their learning.
Teachers plan a broad and balanced curriculum that varies from cohort to cohort, to take advantage of each group’s interests and needs. Teachers use a high degree of personal creativity in the planning of their lessons, drawing on Bloom’s Taxonomy, to ensure that higher order thinking skills are an integral part of extending children’s learning. National Curriculum objectives form the beginning of the planning process. Our school-wide approach to process driven, graded, success criteria is used to support children’s learning within lessons and ensure that challenge has been considered.
Specialist teachers and teaching assistants are a key element to the success of our curriculum, with children being taught by subject specialists for much of their PE, music, art, French and outdoor learning, throughout their time at the school.
In order to enhance pupils’ creativity and confidence, our curriculum provides many opportunities for curriculum enrichment and performance, with all classes being involved in musical and dramatic performances at least three times a year, as well as taking part in a wide range of community events and real life learning opportunities. Staff plan and lead high quality educational visits that bring learning alive and broaden children’s horizons.
Our ‘Unhomework’ approach to home learning extends children’s independence and motivates additional effort and therefore learning, by allowing children to explore any element of their learning that they are interested in and presenting it in any format that suits their talents, interests and learning styles.
As part of our mission statement of developing our pupils to be ‘great people who make a difference in our world’, we encourage them to take on many leadership responsibilities around the school; Eco Council, School Council, Values Council, BLP Council, Sports Council, Change 4 Life Team, Leadership Council, Yr 6 prefects. All groups are given a high degree of autonomy and are supported and encouraged to make a difference within the school, parish, local, national and/or international community.

Impact

Impact is judged by progress made across the school in different subject areas. Monitoring takes place in the form of: internal book scrutinies, ongoing formative assessment, pupil voice and discussions in class, summative assessments which provide tracking data (NFER/ White Rose/ SATs papers) and teacher assessments. SATs results are also analysed and whole school development target areas set from this. These factors ensure that we are able to maintain extremely high standards, with achievement at the end of KS2 consistently well above the national average (with a high proportion of children demonstrating greater depth at the end of each phase).
We also judge the impact of our curriculum by the impact that our pupils make in the world (raising money for charities, visits to care homes, voluntary support of local and parish events, engagement with supporting the needs of others).
A key impact of our curriculum is the confidence and accomplishments of our Year 6 leavers, who leave Holy Redeemer having lived out the school’s mission statement and ready for the next stage of their lives.

‘We cannot teach people anything,
we can only help them discover it within themselves’
Galileo Galilei