At Clough & Risegate Primary School, we believe that strong, positive relationships within our school and community provide the foundations for a school to flourish. Together Everyone Achieves More within our school and we adopt an optimistic and positive culture of success.

Our core values are at the heart of all we achieve.

Curiosity, Friendship & Community

• Helping children develop lively, enquiring and curious minds by providing an imaginative, inspiring curriculum that helps them to flourish.
• We see each other as friends in our learning journeys. Friends treat each other with respect and kindness everyday.
• Creating a happy, healthy and secure community in which everyone feels valued and respected, with equal opportunities for all. We welcome the community to our school to share their skills and knowledge.

A key element of our school's culture is the ethos of care: care for oneself, for others and for the environment.  We are a very proud, small, rural primary school, where the family ethos, positive attitudes and good behaviour are reflected throughout. We foster a caring environment, promoting consideration and appreciation for others. We spend time developing self esteem, self discipline and independence. Kindness is key and through mutual respect and collaboration, every child can find security and experience success.

Our Curriculum

The school's curriculum framework has been devised to ensure that knowledge and key skills in all subjects are taught in a coherent, well-planned and progressive manner. Key skills help the children to constantly improve their learning throughout their time in education, as well as in later life. The key skills are complemented by the development across the curriculum of 'thinking skills' - information processing, reasoning, enquiry, creative thinking and evaluation skills. Our curriculum is often taught through over-arching themes which makes learning meaningful for the children. Our curriculum is designed to promote long-term memory. Opportunities are provided to return to concepts and skills over time, in order to gain a growing developmental understanding.

Our school’s commitment to outdoor learning and first-hand real-life experiences benefits every child’s development. Age appropriately, all the children are directly involved in assessing risks. This heightens their awareness and understanding of risks in their daily lives across a range of environments. In this way, children are learning a crucial life skill that will promote safety and well-being today and through into adulthood.

We aim to develop children as individuals – physically, mentally, culturally and spiritually but above all as lifelong learners, able to make a positive contribution to the local and wider community, today and in the future.

What do we offer in our curriculum?

We follow the early years framework in EYFS and the national curriculum in KS1 and KS2.

Our school curriculum is designed to be active, hands-on and memorable. The focus is squarely on learning but learning in a way that is enjoyable and driven by the interests of the pupils.

There are three key drivers in our curriculum. These form the foundations of our curriculum and permeate all aspects of school:

Farm to Fork - Outdoor Learning
We provide our children with safe and varied outdoor experiences which they might not access at home or elsewhere. Outdoor learning provides health benefits and opportunities to self-assess risk. As well as this, it promotes well-being, collaboration, a connection to nature and a greater level of enjoyment and motivation. We use our year round growing area and polytunnel to plant, grow and harvest vegetables and fruit, which are then used by the children in our curriculum kitchen. The crucial skills developed through this approach, ensures that our children understand where their food comes from and how important it is to cook and eat healthy meals. These life skills will ensure the children from our rural community keep connected to the local area and grow up fully understanding the importance of being fit and healthy, looking after themselves and others.

Physical Development and Wellbeing
We encourage healthy living and active learning beyond the classroom. We promote a love of sport and physical exercise which supports children’s learning and wellbeing. Our school's Gold Award confirms our commitment to ensuring that our children access the best coaches, sessions, outdoor play spaces and opportunities for physical exercise as possible. We take proud in our pastoral care and family ethos. Every child and family are supported in a wide variety of ways to ensure our children are safe, healthy and well cared for. We work tirelessly to ensure our children are equipped with the tools needed to make them well adjusted, confident and kind individuals with a thirst for knowledge and an alert, keen curiosity for life.

Language Development and Vocabulary
Nationally, there is evidence of a "vocabulary gap" between children on-entry to school. In order to close this gap and to promote a love of reading and writing, we provide a word-rich environment and a love of stories and books. Reading is always a high priority in order to allow our children to access the full curriculum offer with a focus on high quality teaching of phonics. We use Read, Write inc and then Accelerated Reader in school, which evidence shows a rigorous and sequential approach to the reading curriculum. These schemes ensure we develop pupils’ fluency, confidence and enjoyment in reading.

How do we deliver our curriculum?

English, Mathematics and Science are coherently planned and sequenced to ensure clear progression within and between year groups. We enable children to develop knowledge and key skills in these subjects so that they can apply them in different contexts.

Other subjects in the national curriculum are carefully planned over the long term so that pupils’ experiences are deep and broad. Our children acquire the knowledge and cultural capital they need to broaden their horizons, become aspirational citizens and succeed in life. 

Reading is given high priority in order to allow pupils to access the full curriculum with a focus on high quality teaching of phonics and oracy. We are a part of The Lincolnshire Reading Pledge and we strive to continually improve in this key area.

Each subject of the curriculum has a comprehensive document that outlines knowledge, skills, coverage for each year group in a clear and progressive way. Conscious connections, continuous provision and links to our three key drivers are made to ensure a cohesive experience for all. Longitudinal learning to revisit ideas and concepts to enable deeper learning is also included.

Long term, medium term and short term planning is designed to help pupils to remember the content they’ve been taught and to use and apply knowledge into larger ideas.

The school is committed to being fully inclusive and provision is made to ensure that disadvantaged pupils and pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities are able to access the curriculum in full.

How do we know our curriculum is successful?

Our commitment to providing a broad and balanced curriculum, with clearly defined key drivers which thread their way through all subjects, results in the majority of children achieving a mastery of the content; they remember what they have learned and are fluent in it. Some pupils attain a greater depth of understanding.

Children who attend our school will care for and respect themselves, others and the environment. They will be good at collaborating; working together for success. They will have a positive and resilient attitude and will embrace and celebrate diversity.