At Melin Primary School, we have high expectations that encourage good habits, promote ambition and positive attitudes to learning. This will enable the children to grow to be literate, numerate, digitally competent and independent life-long learners. They will be happy, healthy, safe and contribute creatively and ethically to their community, Wales and the world. To enable us to meet these aims, we have consulted with parents, carers and most importantly our children to find out what our children need in our Melin Primary School curriculum. This has been done through parental questionnaires, school council meetings and assemblies and staff development sessions.

Our curriculum is constructed to meet the requirements of the four purposes with learning opportunities carefully constructed to give pupils the opportunities to develop the skills, knowledge and experiences they need through purposeful themes and real-life contexts which develop pupils who can use their thinking skills to analyse, evaluate and create in different contexts when required.

The ‘what matters’ statements from the Areas of Learning and Experience have been carefully considered and, through our adapted Cornerstones curriculum, learning opportunities have been identified to provide meaningful learning activities which require the pupils to engage, develop, innovate and express their learning and understanding towards these statements. 

Learners progress within our curriculum by building on what they know and can do, by adding to and changing their knowledge, skills, capacities, dispositions and values, or by applying them in more complex situations. In Melin Primary School, we characterise learning progressions as:

• developing the knowledge and skills specified in a planned curriculum, such as those in mathematics, science, or the arts;

• more broadly, developing the capacity to think about and explain what has been learned or apply this learning in new ways to other parts of the curriculum or to life outside school; and

• even more broadly, developing personal attributes for learning, such as ecological and cultural awareness, commitment, self-regulation, collaboration and independence.

Pupils will be given effective feedback and time to act on the feedback given so that they have a clear idea of what they need to do to improve. This will be achieved through regular and consistent use of success criteria, formative assessment for learning techniques and the use of longer term targets for literacy, numeracy and wellbeing. A range of assessments will be used by teachers, both summative and formative, to record and evidence the pupils are making and to indicate where they need to go next on their learning journey.

The curriculum will be kept under review by the Governors and school leaders to ensure it meets the aims intended. We will engage with parents and children every two years as part of a planned self-evaluation timetable to review what we need more of, or less of in our curriculum. Any changes will be made in consultation with stakeholders.