Curriculum Summary

Our Curriculum Design

At Cwmlai we strive for excellent teaching and learning with pupil well-being at its heart.  We have worked hard as a whole school community to design a new curriculum which is innovative, exciting, engaging and above all relevant to our pupils’ lives with purposeful activities in authentic contexts.

Our curriculum design has evolved over the past two years through a range of engagement and professional activities including discussions with our pupils, staff, parents, governors and local schools. Each of these has helped to inform decisions regarding the design of our curriculum and has included: 

• Our school leaders and teachers professional learning; reading and researching into aspects of curriculum design, at school and further afield.
• Our involvement in a ‘Curriculum for Wales focus group’ over the past year with head teachers and senior leaders from 8 different schools across RCT  exploring different curriculum models as a result.
• Teachers’ involvement in Action Research into the Four Purposes and using this to explore links between curriculum, pedagogy and learning.
• Use of surveys with parents in which they were asked what they thought their children should learn and which learning dispositions they should develop.
• Use of surveys with pupils across the school who were asked what they thought they should learn and more importantly how they should learn.
• Collaborative work with our School Improvement Group and cluster of schools across Tonyrefail to ensure a continuum of experience for our learners.
• Educational visits by staff to schools in and across the consortium to learn more about curriculum design.
• Continual and ongoing partnership work with a range of providers and organisations both within the educational context and outside of it to develop enriching and educational experiences.  

Our curriculum is designed to allow all learners to realise the characteristics set out in the Four Purposes (ambitious, capable learners; enterprising, creative contributors; ethical, informed citizens; and healthy, confident individuals) and provides for appropriate progression. Our school curriculum is broad and balanced and includes learning opportunities within and across all of the Areas of learning and experience: Expressive Arts; Health and well-being; Humanities; Language, Literacy and Communication; Mathematics and Numeracy; and Science and Technology. It encompasses the concepts in all of the statements of what matters and aligns with the mandatory requirements of teaching Welsh, English and Religion, Values and  Ethics (RVE). 

The mandatory elements of Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) and the cross-curricular skills of literacy, numeracy and digital competence are embedded throughout the curriculum. 

Ensuring that our children make progress, regardless of a learner’s stage of development or starting point, is at the heart of all our curriculum design. Our principles of progression are:

• Increasing effectiveness: we aim for our pupils to become more independent, curious and self-motivated as a result of the learning experiences we plan.
• Increasing breadth and depth of knowledge: each of our AoLEs approaches planning according to the concepts.
• Refinement and growing sophistication in the use and application of skills: We want our pupils to become increasingly confident and inquisitive experts within the fields of the AoLEs.
• Making connections and transferring learning into new contexts: Pupils are given opportunities to use the learning from one AoLE to enrich and challenge their learning in other areas.

Our school improvement planning and review cycle will continue to focus on ensuring that our curriculum will continue to meet the needs of our learners, ensure our pupils make progress and are in line with our overall school vision. We will continue to seek and employ feedback from pupils, staff, parents, Governors, cluster schools and evidence-based research to amend and refine our curriculum design.