Curriculum intent

The curriculum at Academy St James is designed to be balanced, challenging and relevant. It is also innovative and personalised, built around students’ individual needs and based on their ability and potential.

At Academy St James, we want our students to be highly successful in their learning. We offer a broad range of subjects at all levels preparing students for further education and future careers. We are also responsive to the national agenda thus ensuring that our students can compete robustly with all students nationally.

Curriculum principles

Aspire – That as a school we direct all hopes and ambitions into succeeding for all our pupils.

Achieve – That all pupils will achieve their full potential and fulfil their dreams.

Believe- We believe that everyone is unique and special and deserves the very best education.

We asked ourselves these questions when designing our curriculum:

Why is our curriculum the best one for our children?

How does our curriculum help to give our children confidence, knowledge and many moments of success?

How are we putting this into practice each and every day?

What impact is the curriculum having on pupils, staff and the wider community?

Our 5 ways of being:

As a staff team we looked at 5 things we felt our children needed to help them to succeed. We wanted them to become:

·       Confident communicators

·       Knowledgeable and expert learners

·       Show you care

·       Be yourself always

·       Contribute to your community by succeeding together

We use these 5 ways of being to promote great attitudes to learning and to help our pupils each and every day. Here are some examples below:

Confident communicators- we find opportunities to speak in worship, have class presentations and talk to visitors. We also have a school, Eco and RE council

Knowledgable and expert learners- we support our pupils through pre teaching, our vocabulary programme and by celebrating work in whole school worship.

Show you care- we provide opportunities for pupils to visit different community places and help other people such as Thornton Church, Lowergrange Community Centre and Cafe West.

Always be Yourself- our rich curriculum offers opportunities for pupils to try new activities such as jujitsu, fencing and explore Pitty Beck as well as providing careers workshops so children get the chance to look at jobs for the future

Contribute to your community- we work with the local food banks, Participate and BHT education as well as making sure our pupils all study the local area. For example Year 3 and 4 visited Haworth and looked at why this is an important community.

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  Success in phonics- pure joy!

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  Year 1 and 2 outside- a local area study.

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  Pre teaching vocabulary in Year 3

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  Playtimes are so important- well being and physical activity

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  Collaboration and caring for others in your class.

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  Time to reflect- whole school worship.

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  Our library was opened by Hilary Robinson and is used by children and their parents