Our Curriculum - Respect Life Curriculum

At St. John’s CE (A) Primary School, our curriculum has been designed with an understanding of the uniqueness of our children and also in discussions with our school community and wider national research.

At St John’s, we believe that our children deserve an ambitious and balanced curriculum that is accessible to all.   As a Church of England Primary school, we place our Christian values at the heart of everything we do, and these are woven through both the curriculum and wider school life.  We want our children to leave St. John’s with the firm values of dedication, courage and joy; ready for their next steps in their educational and wider life journey.

Our curriculum enables our children to develop a deep understanding of all subjects and the interconnections between them.  With a sense of community and the celebration of difference we aim to use a ‘What if Learning’ approach to our curriculum to encourage pupils to think and understand beyond themselves.  Our curriculum will help them to make ethical and moral decisions that will help them and others, in the wider sense, to flourish around them.

From creativity to investigation, our children discover the big ideas and answer the big questions of life through our sequential curriculum which develops their skills and knowledge across the subject areas.  Opening our children to rich quality texts supports a springboard to developing the skills and knowledge we want our children to learn.  Our curriculum spans from Nursery to Year 6, building towards an end point, which helps children to know more, remember more and do more. 

We believe children learn better when they are encouraged to use their imagination and apply their learning to engaging contexts.  Our forest schools approach also helps our children to do this.  Our curriculum engages our children, stimulating curiosity and encouraging them to make links to prior learning. Real life experiences in and out of school are used to further support bringing the topic and learning to life. Where children’s new learning may begin in the school, we aim to offer pathways to local and wider community experiences so that opportunities are sustained into future experiences beyond St. John’s.

A combination of our curriculum design and delivery of this (pedagogy), supports our children in leaving St. John’s with the awareness and understanding, knowledge and skills that they need for the future, treasured memories and a life-long love of learning. 

More detailed information, including curriculum maps for each of our subject and forest schools are available on our curriculum page: