Curriculum Statement & Planning Documents

Curriculum Intent - What we are trying to achieve through the curriculum?

At Edgware Primary, we have worked collaboratively to design our unique Edgware Curriculum, underpinned by our whole-school vision and values and personalised to the needs of our community. Whilst it is vital that our children learn what is in the statutory National Curriculum, we recognise that they need much more than this.

As an accredited Thinking School, we believe in developing resilient minds and that learning should be enjoyable within a nurturing and inclusive environment. Thinking is at the very heart of our curriculum. We place emphasis on developing critical thinkers and independent, self-regulated learners — children who have the confidence and skills to ask questions and find answers for themselves. Through our engaging, bespoke and balanced curriculum, we encourage reflective and creative thinking and inspire our children to bring their own experiences and ideas.

We equip our pupils with the broad skills, rich knowledge, understanding and tools necessary to develop as resilient learners. We ensure that all pupils — including those who are disadvantaged or have SEND — receive the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed. We embrace the cultural diversity of our families and reflect this throughout our curriculum, actively promoting equality, inclusion, acceptance and tolerance.

As both a Thinking School and a Trauma-Informed school, we weave together metacognitive skills and compassionate, relationship-centred practice to help all children feel safe, understood, and ready to engage with their learning. These two approaches are not separate; they work together to ensure that every child — whatever their starting point or experience — can access learning, build resilience and grow in confidence.

We prepare children for the next stage of their life and life after school. As Art Costa says "Not just a life of tests, but for the tests of life".

Self Regulation and the Learning Mind

We develop three key, interconnected areas in our pupils, drawing on the research of James Mannion (2020)

Metacognition + Self-Regulation = Self-Regulated Learning
Monitoring and controlling what's in your head/thinking.	Monitoring how you react with your environment; relationships with yourself and others	Application of metacognition and self-regulation and learning.

We understand that readiness to learn and success begin with self-regulation. To support this, we teach children how the brain works and equip them with practical strategies to manage their emotions, thoughts, and behaviours effectively.

Mental Health, Personal Growth and the Wider Curriculum

We focus on mental health, personal growth and development. We do this by exploring behaviour, morals & values, attitudes, choices and mindset and by celebrating diversity, all of which are openly taught and form a really important part of our implicit curriculum. The curriculum is meticulously planned to ensure children acquire key knowledge and the application of skills in all areas of their development.

We systematically plan and carefully sequence our teaching in order to promote learning, reinforce key knowledge and skills, provide challenge and clear progression throughout every year group.

How We Tailor Our Curriculum

In addition, we tailor our curriculum as follows:

At school level, we plan opportunities to provide children with experiences they would not otherwise have — such as stage performances, Shakespeare productions, enterprise schemes, art galleries, art exhibitions, museum visits, places of worship, music tuition, careers days, themed weeks and aspirational talks. We make best use of our specific location and work closely with our local community, including strong links with a local care home, the Church, the synagogue and the local police.
We have a specific mental health curriculum promoting wellbeing and teaching children how to look after their own mental wellness. Children are supported by peer mental health champions and staff trained in this area.
We have a comprehensive safeguarding curriculum that ensures children understand how to stay safe online, promotes British values and equips every child with the knowledge and skills required for personal safeguarding.
At an individual level, we enable each child to access the curriculum and meet the learning objectives set through carefully tailored support. Our expectations of progress are uniformly high for all pupils. We insist that all teachers treat prior lower-attaining pupils the same as any other pupil and set challenging lesson targets for all.
Our objectives are that children should be sufficiently robust in their knowledge to apply it, alongside their skills, across the broad curriculum. We actively plan opportunities to support this.

Subject Leadership and Curriculum Expertise

Apart from our ECTs, every class teacher is a subject leader. We are a school that expects subject leaders to develop genuine expertise in their area, building strong subject knowledge and championing their subject across the school. In their subject leadership roles, they support their colleagues, drive curriculum coherence and ensure their subject is ambitious, well-sequenced and consistently implemented — so that every child receives the highest quality of education.

Our Key Curriculum Drivers

At Edgware, everything is underpinned by our core values. These values support our key curriculum drivers, which ensure all stakeholders understand our ambitions for our children — our intent.

Key Drivers: Ambition and Aspirations	To challenge all children in all aspects of school life so they can achieve their optimum potential year on year. We want to raise the aspiration of children and their families and inspire them to lead a fulfilled life beyond the local environment. We want to expose our children to the endless possibilities open to them and instil in them a desire to achieve. In doing this, we aim to make children well rounded, resilient, independent learners who want a challenge and can apply these skills to their life.
Active Learning and Enrichment	To provide high-quality teaching and enriched activities that broaden children's knowledge of the world, expose them to new possibilities and equip them to become good citizens.
Challenge and Curiosity	To foster a genuine love of learning and the world around them and encourage children to ask questions, step outside their comfort zone, stretch themselves and succeed.
Emotional Awareness	To develop well-rounded individuals who understand their own needs and those of others, and have the strategies to express themselves and self-regulate effectively.
Literacy and Numeracy	To give every child strong foundational skills in literacy and numeracy that enable them to access the whole curriculum, share ideas confidently and apply their knowledge and skills in real life situations now and in the future.
Resilience and Independence	To develop independent and resilient citizens with strong values, morals and relationships — able to keep themselves and others safe and live a positive, fulfilled life.
Skills for Life	To ensure every child leaves Edgware equipped with key skills across the curriculum that they can use and apply throughout their future.

CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION- How is the curriculum delivered?

Our curriculum is underpinned by our vision and school values, our trauma informed approach, thinking tools, and bespoke framework to support our planning and delivery of learning. We have three strands to our curriculum:

Knowledge- Behaviour- Enrichment

All curriculum subject areas link back to our key drivers.The requirements of the Edgware Curriculum (including National and Local requirements) are mapped out at whole school level by Senior Leaders and Subject Leaders. Individual year groups then plan the curriculum to meet the needs of the pupils they are teaching. This is then adjusted for individual classes.

We have created clear structures for teaching different subjects to ensure consistency across the school and the best possible approach.

Training and support from Subject Leaders ensures that staff have the necessary subject knowledge to deliver the curriculum confidently and effectively.

Formative and summative pupil assessment informs our practice and enables us to appropriately challenge every pupil. The curriculum is planned thoroughly, starting with children’s current knowledge and skills, so that real progress can be made and measured. Learning is always built on.

Developing the children’s ‘sticky knowledge’ and automaticity is central to our approach. This allows for the repeating / developing of knowledge and skills and in doing so deepening children’s knowledge, understanding and skills.

Monitoring is central to leaders and class teachers’ work. This is achieved through dialogue with pupils, in depth scrutiny of pupils’ work, monitoring of planning, lesson drop ins and dialogue with staff. Through monitoring and evaluation we have a clear understanding of pupils’ progress and standards, and can address the needs of each individual pupil.

This protocol ensures subject leaders and teachers know what precisely is being taught, and in what order, so that pupils know more, remember more and can do more. This also ensures that class teachers and subject leaders have a shared understanding of appropriate challenge and of the extent to which learned information is retained long term.

IMPACT - What difference is the Edgware Curriculum making?

From their different starting points, all children will make at least good progress and achieve their potential — academically, emotionally, creatively, socially and physically. Knowledge, understanding and skills will be secured and embedded so that children attain highly and are prepared for the next stage of their education and beyond.

Our children will have strong core skills in English and Maths, and will carry these with them into their futures. They will be kind, respectful and honest, demonstrate inclusive attitudes and have a strong moral compass and a clear sense of their role in the wider world.

They will develop self-awareness, emotional resilience and the ability to persevere when they encounter challenge. They will have a genuine love of learning, and they will leave us as well-rounded individuals — having grown academically, socially and emotionally — with the ambition and aspiration to take their learning forward and improve their life chances.

Pupil Mobility

Our school is expert at absorbing children with EAL and low standards into every year group. We have many children join us in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6. The progress our pupils make is significantly understated in headline numbers because of the progress made by our latecomers, which does not feature in published results.