Implementation

We use Dimensions ‘Learning Means the World’ Curriculum as the main vehicle for achieving our outlined intent, with a view to providing an ambitious, highly visible curriculum offer.

The ‘Learning Means the World’ Curriculum is underpinned by four highly relevant world issues, known as the four Cs:-

Culture

Communication

Conflict

Conservation

As a school that predominantly represents a White British heritage, with little personal awareness or experience of other cultural groups, we want our pupils to fully appreciate and embrace diversity by learning about, celebrating and developing an understanding of a range of different cultural and faith heritages. We want them to challenge racism, generalisations and stereotypes, with an awareness of the importance of diversity as a whole. With the natural movement within the Armed Forces, it is imperative that our children are receptive to new cultural experiences.  

We want them to value difference, understand the roots and importance of cultural heritage and behave in a respectful and tolerant way towards others, regardless of faith, ethnicity or background. We actively and explicitly promote cross-cultural friendship, respect, tolerance and understanding through ‘Learning Means the World’.

We believe that language underpins all learning and provides pupils with the necessary tools in order to fully access the broader curriculum.

We want our pupils to be able to articulate, share and value their own and each other’s ideas, knowing that their opinions really matter. We also want them to be able to express their thinking and reasoning clearly in discussions, by encouraging collaboration and the exchange of ideas. 95% of our pupils transfer from Ashchurch to a large secondary school and so we want our pupils to leave us ready and confident to stand up for themselves and voice their opinions in a much larger setting. Children are keen to learn and expand their vocabulary but they need to experience and use it more, in a range of contexts.

Conflict surrounds our children today through the news and media, and they need to have the tools to deal with this. Having a developed understanding of sources of conflict and recognising the impact that conflict can have on relationships at a personal, local, national and international scale, we believe, will make a difference to their own choices. We believe that life skills should be taught throughout the curriculum and an understanding of responsible, respectful behaviour is an important aspect of learning. We want our pupils to be able to independently manage conflict, whenever it may arise, in a constructive, timely manner. Through this curriculum we believe we can provide our pupils with strategies to deal with differences of opinion in a positive way.

We want our pupils to care passionately about our world and to engage actively with conservation issues as good stewards. We feel pupils will do this best through a curriculum that puts sustainability at the heart of the curriculum, employing a more structured approach to developing environmental awareness and appreciation, not just at local, but also national and global levels. We have our own Forest School and, as part of sustainable growth, we aim to develop our own allotment area as a means of allowing pupils to become more invested in, and learn about, conservation issues. The school, being situated in Tewkesbury, has had terrible floods from the Rivers Avon and Severn. As part of our building project, the school must have a swale, this is a specially designed set of trenches which supports drainage. Many pupils experience first-hand the impact of climate change, having had experience of flooding in their own homes and this makes this a focus that is even more relevant to them.