Our Philosophy

'Firm Foundations, Shining Bright' 

Our motto, ‘Firm Foundations, Shining Bright’, resonates throughout school and in our partnership with our families and wider community. Through our stimulating curriculum, our aim is to provide opportunities for all children to foster a love of learning and be successful and reflective learners. When selecting our programmes of study, we strive to provide a broad and balanced curriculum for our children that has clear progression of knowledge, skills and abilities throughout each key stage and their whole journey through school. This is inclusive of local, national and international issues which enable children to develop the courage to be respectful individuals that make reasoned, positive, unbiased and informed choices.

As a church school, the traditions and values of the Christian church are woven into school life and tolerance, respect and understanding of other's beliefs is promoted. We understand the significance of faith and children developing an awareness and understanding of different beliefs. Our school celebrates and embraces difference which nurtures children to become tolerant, respectful and empathetic individuals. Christian values underpin the journey children embark on throughout our school and are embedded within our curriculum. We aim to provide our children with firm foundations for life, building upon the rock of Jesus.  We work closely with our clergy team to help our children to understand what it means to 'build upon the rock of Jesus'.  

PETERS VALUES

Our PETERS values are:

Our PETERS values are at the heart of everything we do in school. We foster these values to allow our children to strive and succeed as individuals within and outside our school community, in our local area of the Wirral. Our PETERS values contribute towards our core British values, enabling the children to show courageous advocacy and apply our PETERS values to local, national and international causes.

Our Curriculum

The foundations of our curriculum are:

• Spiritual - knowing and sharing God’s love, exploring and respecting their own, and others’, beliefs.
• Academic - tailoring learning to suit the needs of all our children, encouraging a lifelong love of learning and pride in their achievements.
• Emotional - encouraging happiness and resilience.
• Physically - promoting healthy choices and lifestyles.
• Social - promoting friendship and respect, teamwork and responsibility; nurturing outward-looking citizens with a rounded view of the wider world.

Intent

At our school we provide a rich and varied learning environment that allows children to develop their skills and abilities to their full potential.

The intent of what we want our children to gain in the Curriculum comes from:

• Nurturing our spiritual, moral, social and cultural values through our Christian ethos.
• Understanding the historical and geographical significance of our local area on the Wirral, our place in Britain and the wider world around us.
• Developing our sense of belonging in our local community, celebrating the diversity amongst us and embedding a culture of inclusion.
• Creating opportunities to spark interest and enthusiasm to enable children to acquire the key skills of reading, writing and arithmetic which can be applied confidently and effectively across all subjects.
• Encouraging curiosity in expanding their own learning into areas which capture their interest and imagination.
• Igniting children’s learning through purposeful and enriching experiences that enhance their enjoyment of all that they learn.
• Exploring democracy, the rule of law and tolerance to gain an understanding of fundamental British Values.

Daily opportunities to gain and develop key skills in reading, writing and arithmetic are the foundations of our curriculum, helping to prepare our children to be lifelong learners. Regular problem-solving and reasoning activities are built in across the curriculum to allow the children to use their speaking and listening skills and apply in other areas.

Implementation

All subjects are taught discretely at St Peter’s. Where possible, skills and knowledge are applied through cross-curricular links. Previous knowledge is reviewed and built on through each new strand of work.

In order to achieve our intended outcomes each member of staff takes responsibility for contributing to, maintaining, monitoring and enhancing our curriculum for the children:

Each subject leader takes responsibility for ensuring that the curriculum offered to our children within their subject provides clear progression of knowledge, skills and understanding throughout the school. They create, monitor and adapt, long term planning across all key stages in line with national curriculum expectations to maintain a vibrant, diverse and inclusive curriculum for all our children. Subject leaders support teachers in the implementation of planning through providing training where required or with general support with quality first teaching.

Each teacher within the school takes responsibility for developing short term learning sequences for all subjects in line with the long and medium term planning. They ensure that children are being taught the appropriate skills and knowledge identified on a daily basis. Throughout all strands, teachers find enriching learning experiences that ignite and enhance the children’s enjoyment of learning. Planning is adapted to include all children in line with their developmental expectations ensuring inclusion for all. At all times, teachers act as a positive role model, encouraging children to make their own unbiased, reasoned and informed choices in line with our Christian ethos.

The senior leadership team are responsible for holding to account, motivating and supporting subject leaders and teachers in maintaining a high quality learning environment throughout the school that embraces all. They are responsible for monitoring both the quality of provision and learning outcomes to ensure that all children are receiving an inclusive and progressive education that embraces diversity. Throughout all this work, the senior leadership team are accountable for inspiring, promoting and maintaining a curriculum that is underpinned by the Christian values that are embedded in all learning across school.

The governors are responsible for working alongside the senior leadership team and subject leaders to monitor and enhance the quality of the curriculum and learning environment provided to the children. They will understand the expected curriculum outcomes and both support and challenge staff to ensure that these outcomes are achieved.

Impact

To ensure that the implementation has matched the intention of the curriculum, the quality of provision and outcomes are monitored in a variety of ongoing ways:

• Termly book scrutiny of selected children’s work by subject leaders and SLT.
• Termly inclusive pupil voice.
• Learning walks by subject leaders, often in partnership with SLT.
• Continual assessment for learning by teacher.
• Summative termly outcomes in reading, spelling and mathematics.
• Termly moderation of children’s writing in year group teams under the guidance of the English subject leads.
• End of Key Stage 1 and 2 SATs.
• Phonics screening in Year 1.
• Multiplication in Year 4.
• Baseline assessments in EYFS.
• Learning walks for classroom environments.
• Monitoring the amount of time allotted to individual subjects.
• Valuing and celebrating the achievements.

Teachers, subject leaders and SLT will continually review individual units of work and discuss changes that will enhance future learning within those units including:

• The quality of rich learning experiences/school outings/visitor interactions that the children engage in:
• The impact and learning outcome responses formed by the children from special curriculum learning days/weeks;
• The quality of teaching and learning within a strand of work;
• The impact of daily planning across a strand of work;
• The accessibility to, and quality of, resources;
• Children’s feedback opinions and suggestions;
• Teacher’s feedback from individual year groups.

All analysis, review, scrutiny and feedback will be evaluated against outcomes and, if deemed to enhance future learning, subject leaders will then amend and update planning in line with feedback, continuing to ensure that new intentions and implementations fall in line with national curriculum expectations.