At Oak Farm Primary School, our curriculum is rooted in our belief that “From little acorns grow mighty oaks.” We recognise that every child arrives at Oak Farm with different experiences, strengths and starting points. Our ambition is for every pupil to leave us as a knowledgeable, confident, curious and articulate learner, equipped with the knowledge, skills and character they need to flourish in the next stage of their education and beyond.

Our Oak Farm Curriculum Framework provides the foundations for achieving this. It brings together four overarching principles: Plan with Purpose, Grow Expertise, Support Every Pupil and Teach Creatively. These principles are woven through every subject and help us ensure that our curriculum is ambitious, coherent, inclusive and engaging.

Plan with Purpose

We believe that great learning does not happen by chance. Our curriculum is deliberately planned and sequenced so that learning builds logically over time. Teachers are clear about the important knowledge, vocabulary and skills pupils need to learn and how each new piece of learning connects to what has come before.

Through building on prior learning and carefully planned progression through a spiral curriculum, important concepts are revisited and developed with increasing depth and complexity. This enables pupils to make meaningful connections, strengthen their understanding and remember more overtime.

Grow Expertise

Our ambition is not simply for children to complete activities, but to develop a genuine understanding of each subject.

Carefully selected substantive knowledge gives pupils the essential facts, concepts and ideas that underpin each discipline. Alongside this, we explicitly teach the skills and disciplinary thinking that enable children to understand how knowledge is created, tested and communicated within different subjects.

Children therefore learn not only what historians, scientists, geographers, artists, designers and musicians know, but increasingly how they think and work.

Through the explicit teaching of skills, modelling, purposeful practice and opportunities for application, pupils develop increasing confidence and independence as they progress through the school.

Support Every Pupil

Ambition and inclusion sit at the heart of our curriculum. We have high expectations for every child and believe that background, additional need or starting point should not place a ceiling on what a pupil can achieve.

Our teachers carefully consider the support, scaffolding, resources and adaptations pupils need to access ambitious learning. We aim to remove barriers while maintaining high expectations, ensuring that all children are able to participate, experience success and make strong progress.

Language is central to this. Vocabulary and oracy are deliberately developed across the curriculum so that pupils have the words they need to understand new ideas, ask questions, explain their thinking, reason, debate and communicate with confidence.

Teach Creatively

Knowledge provides children with the foundations from which creativity, curiosity and independent thinking can grow.

Our curriculum therefore creates opportunities for pupils to explore, investigate, question, design, create, perform, problem-solve and make connections. Children are encouraged to use what they have learned in new contexts through application and critical thinking.

We want our pupils to become active participants in their learning: asking thoughtful questions, considering different perspectives, making informed choices and explaining the reasoning behind their ideas.