Highcliffe St Mark Primary School

Our Curriculum

At Highcliffe St Mark Primary School, our Christian values of respect, courage and compassion are woven through everything that we do like a golden thread. They drive our commitment to unlocking the potential in every child.  Leaders at all levels have a commitment to continuously refine our curriculum, ensuring that it offers the highest quality education for our children.

From their first days with us to their last, we prioritise securing the knowledge and skills that children need in speaking and listening, reading, writing and maths. We offer the chance to bring this learning to life through experiences linked in real world examples. We adopt an explorative approach in all subjects which appeals to the children’s natural curiosity, develops their language skills and grows independence. Through careful and well-planned assessments in each subject area, we monitor the children’s progress carefully, ensuring that any emerging gaps are identified and that all children are supported emotionally and academically to have the best chance of overcoming any barriers to learning.

At the heart of our ethos is a reminder to also look beyond the academic. We place great emphasis on promoting our children’s emotional and physical health and well-being alongside their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. We aim to enable every child to develop a self-awareness. We help them to understand their personal strengths and the areas that they need to work on and plan meaningful opportunities to build interpersonal skills and resilience. We seek and exploit opportunities to enrich our curriculum offer through regular visits and visitors, experiences and community links. We are guided by our children and listen to their ideas and feedback when planning these opportunities. Pupil voice is a strength of our school. Offering many different opportunities to be heard by school leaders enables our children to share their thoughts and ideas about our school.

Our curriculum embraces the community in which it is situated. We are close to the coastal path, beaches of Barton on Sea and Highcliffe, the historic and naturally beautiful Hengistbury Head and the biodiverse New Forest. We want our children to appreciate the rich history and natural resources around them, to take advantage of them to inspire their learning but to also to learn how to protect them for the future. As a Christian Aid Global Neighbours and Green Flag award winning school, we offer many opportunities for our children to make a real difference on a local and global scale.  We have sculpted a curriculum which celebrates difference and promotes intercultural awareness and tolerance, drawing on our values of compassion and respect to guide us, so that when they leave us, our children are ready to take their next steps and to embrace life in a diverse and modern Britain.

For information about our accessibility plan, please follow link below:

https://www.highcliffeprimary.dorset.sch.uk/policies/